The Oodua Nationalist Coalition said on Friday that there are plans to cause political crisis in the six South West states through a string of killings and assassinations of political leaders, a plot that also targets the Osun State Governor, Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola.
{jacomment off}The group, a coalition of 25 pan Yoruba groups, said that having lost the elections in the most ignoble manner, the vanquished group wants to come back to power by all means necessary, including, but not limited to fueling the declaration of a state of emergency in some of the South West states after a well conceived chain of sponsored instabilities, the key of which is political assassinations.
In a statement on Friday, signed by the coalition’s Director of Information, Dr. Akinwumi Caleb Ibikunle, the group said it was aware of plots by a rival political group in the South West to cause series of political upheavals, culminating in the possible assassination of Aregbesola.
Ibikunle stated “We have been reliably informed by a trusted security operative of plots to cause mayhem through the assassination of a serving governor.
“We have written to the Inspector General of Police to investigate this plot. Since the Peoples Democratic Party lost power in the South West area, the killing gangs are yet to go into sleep.
“There have been series of meetings in Osogbo by some prominent PDP leaders.
“We have it on good authority that there are two major plans in the offing: the first one is to assassinate the governor of Osun State during one of his visits outside the state, the second plot is aimed at framing up the Osun State Governor, Ogbeni Aregbesola, charging him on trumped up charges of treason, the same episode that drew public outrage in 1964 and 1993, when two outstanding Yoruba leaders, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Chief M.K.O. Abiola, were framed up by the oligarchy with the help of internal conspirators.
“This time the allegation against Ogbeni Aregbesola is that he held a flag as a symbol of identity for the people of the South West, at a time when AK-47 rifle or bombs have become symbols of group identity in some parts of the country.
“We are aware that the Northern Governors Forum has a flag, the BRACE states of the South South also have a symbol of identity. It is criminal and irresponsible for any government to seek to persecute a political leader on this kind of trite alter, in a country that lays claim to pluralism and federal democracy.
“In the US, every state has its own flag and anthem, whereas regional identity through all forms of symbols was part of the groundwork laid by Nigeria’s founding fathers.
“The main aim while Ogbeni Aregbesola has become a target is found in the desperation of the PDP to maintain a 360 circle of atrocious supremacy on Nigeria, having successfully seized the Federal Government and most states of the country through aggression, threats and bullying.
The statement added: “Nigerians have a long history of repression in the hands of a wealthy but primitive gangster that has been holding the country down since her pre-colonial and post colonial days.
“This brutal cult has its rookies across the country. In the South West it is represented by a small devilish bloc dominated by retired soldiers that have used all their political lives destroying the most cherished values of their own people for euphoric material gains.
“While the Action Congress of Nigeria may not represent the best political formation for the Yoruba people, being a product of the enduring contradictions of the Nigerian neo-colonial state, it is by all means better than the PDP, which is leading Nigeria to a shipwreck.
“For now, the ACN is the most dominant in the South West region and any alternative proposal should come through democratic means and not through violent aggression against the people or sheer bloodletting.
“We warn that this anti-people force stands the risk of upturning the entire democratic process in Nigeria, if it fails to reverse its culture of despotism and veiled desperation to trample underfoot the will of the people of the South West as expressed in the April 2011 elections, which they now want to subjugate through fascism.
“We strongly caution that the Nigerian state will be underrating the character and form of the resistance that will follow any attempt by this evil gang to impose itself on the people of the South West and destabilise the entire region through their nefarious plots.”