Posted by By RAZAQ BAMIDELE on
Osun State Action Congress (AC) governorship candidate in the 2007 general election, Rauf Aregbesola, has warned Osun State government and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) not to link him with the bomb blast that occurred in Osogbo, Osun State capital nine months ago, declaring, 'I am a man of peace."
•He's ranting - Osun Govt
Osun State Action Congress (AC) governorship candidate in the 2007 general election, Rauf Aregbesola, has warned Osun State government and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) not to link him with the bomb blast that occurred in Osogbo, Osun State capital nine months ago, declaring, 'I am a man of peace."
Aregbesola at a press conference on Wednesday in Lagos raised an alarm that the Osun State government was planning to bring up the issue of the bomb blast again in order to rope him in, asserting, 'all my life, I have never used violence to advance any political or electoral cause."
According to him, the government wanted to rope him in so as to divert the attention of the public from the goings on at the election petition tribunal in Osun State, which he said were going to be in his favour. He said that his popularity in the state was a source of concern to Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola.
Osun State government, however, in a reaction, accused the politician of making wild claims. It tasked him to explain his relationship with some of the principal suspects being held for the crime.
Addressing newsmen in Lagos, Aregbesola said: 'I am a man of peace. As a student activist at the polytechnic, my period was the most peaceful. My rising profile in Osun State, which has dwarfed that of Oyinlola, coupled with my organizational prowess, is the source of headache for him.
'And against this background, the governor and his party would not want to stop at anything to smear me, impugn and malign my character, with a view to scaring away my supporters, keeping me out of circulation and incarcerating my political ambition."
The AC governorship candidate, who stated that 'democracy promotes open and healthy engagement in public discourse that would not incur the wrath of anybody," asserted that 'psychologically, we don't need to use violence to achieve electoral goal because the people in whom the sovereignty resides are with us. I don't need to plant a bomb as a method to prosecute my political interest."
Aregbesola urged the authorities to resort to the use of forensic method anywhere there was electoral dispute, saying that it was the only way to detect electoral fraud scientifically if truly the country wanted to move to the level of political and electoral maturity.
However, in a statement signed by Governor Oyinlola's Chief Press Secretary, Lasisi Olagunju, the government said: 'We need to state categorically that Mr Aregbesola should stop thinking that anyone is desperately trying to do him in for whatever reason. Instead of making wild claims, we call on him to state whether or not he knows the arrested suspect, Richard Abayomi Adesanmi and the one at large, Gboyega Olasogba. Again, what was the relationship between leaders of the Action Congress and one Henry Taye, who was killed in the blast? It will be nice to hear.
'The issue of election petition is quite different from the criminality of the bomb blast. We do not want anyone to attempt to befuddle the issues by linking it with proceedings at the election tribunal. A crime has been committed and it is the duty of the law enforcement agencies to unravel the mystery surrounding the bomb blast. There is definitely no politics in the matter and no one is being witch-hunted.
'We also state that in the last nine months since the incident occurred, no one in government made any comment directly linking Mr Aregbesola with the blast. However, since it is now an open secret that the arrested suspect has made a voluntary statement on oath, giving details of the masterminds and how the operation was planned and executed, it is now the duty of anyone mentioned by the suspect to come clean with explanations. We hope Mr Aregbesola will see the need to prove his innocence in this matter instead of talking politics."