Aregbesola Replies Sambo: Osun Rejected PDP Long Ago

Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State, yesterday, described as mere wishful thinking, remarks by Vice President Namadi Sambo that his party, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, would take over Osun.
Aregbesola equally claimed Vice President Sambo had impugned the integrity of the judiciary by referring to the judgment of the Election Petition Appeal Tribunal that restored the mandate of Aregbesola after the 2007 governorship poll as verdict through “the back door.”
Aregbesola in a response through his Director, Bureau of Communication and Strategy, Semiu Okanlawon, said Sambo could not have been referring to the Osun where the people had demonstrated their total rejection of anything with traits of PDP.
Sambo’s statement, Okanlawon said, aptly captured the depth of self-delusion and deceit to which PDP leadership indulged in, a development he blamed for the total failure of the PDP-led Federal Government in all facets of the Nigerian life.
According to Aregbesola, “Sambo’s statement did not come to us as a surprise. It is the character of the PDP and its leadership to live in a different world far away from the stark realities that daily confront our people.
“For the umpteenth time, we wish to remind Sambo and the entire PDP structure and its candidate for the Osun August 9 poll that Osun has remained different for so many reasons and this is why the macabre dance PDP and its agents of electoral fraud organised in Ekiti cannot be replayed here in Osun.
“Has Sambo forgotten so soon that while PDP reaped from its electoral fraud in all parts of Nigeria in the 2011 election, it was only in Osun that PDP recorded its most humiliating defeat.
“In case Sambo has not thought about it, that was less than six months of the Aregbesola administration when not much had been put on ground in form of sterling performance and massive transformation of Osun.”
Comment on judiciary
Responding to perceived Sambo’s derogatory comment on the judiciary, the statement said the verdict of the tribunal confirmed PDP robbery of the 2007 poll.
He said: “In some saner climes, PDP and its leaders ought to apologise to the entire country and the people of Osun in particular for the trauma they were subjected due to the robbery of Aregbesola’s mandate.
“But the culture of impunity which PDP promotes won’t give room for such decency. It must, however, be noted that never will our people embrace the rule of terror and cluelessness which PDP represents.”
The statement added that the entire Nigeria and the international community had been monitoring the Shenanigans in the build up to the election, saying the PDP candidate had lost the contest before the August 9 date.