A chieftain of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Dele Momodu, has said the re-election of Osun State Governor Ademola Adeleke clearly showed that the will of the people would always prevail in a free and fair election, saying no form of intimidation could stop the resilience of voters anywhere in Nigeria.
Adeleke, who contested on the platform of the Accord Party, won the August 15 governorship election with a total of 511,067 votes, while his closest challenger and candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Oyebamiji, polled 444,815 votes. Najim Salam of the ADC came a distant third with 17,180 votes, while other candidates shared 12,017 votes. The total number of valid votes was 985,079.
Momodu, who was speaking on Politics Today, monitored by the Nigerian Tribune on Monday night in Abuja, described Adeleke as a grassroots politician who is humble and loved by the people of Osun State. He said the governor’s visible projects across the state gave him an edge over his fellow contestants.
He equally added that statements credited to Senator Francis Fadahunsi and Honourable Wole Oke could have swayed votes to Adeleke’s camp, as the whole world was monitoring what he described as a movie in Osun before, during and after the election.
The former presidential aspirant also lambasted governors who invaded Osun in their numbers, saying they did so to please the President out of fear of the unknown, despite their closeness to Governor Adeleke.
Momodu said, ‘This man is a grassroots man, very down-to-earth. Loves his people to bits. I’m one of the citizens from the maternal sides. My mother is from Gbongan Olufi in between Ile-Ife and Ede. And I’ve followed his (Adeleke) trajectory with keen interest. So it was obvious to me that the people love him, he loves the people. And I don’t know how he did it, he made sure that he erected a range of projects in every major part of the state: Ile-Ife, Ilesa, Iwo, Ede, Osogbo and so on and so forth. And it is visible, it’s not something hidden. Dualisation, flyovers and so on and so forth. Light everywhere and you know one of his motto is Imole. So for those of us on ground, we knew he was going to make it. The other thing is that he’s a very spiritual man. We call from the same background. He comes from both Islam and Christianity, same with me and his mother was a prayer warrior, my mother was a prayer warrior. His brother and I don’t think much credit has been given to the chairman, we all call his chairman, and now I’ve added executive producer to his name because what happened in Osun was a movie.
‘At a stage you will not believe it, I almost collapsed when I started seeing the shenanigans of this APC apprachitik and the political bandits that invaded Osun State. But I knew despite all this hullabaloo, he was going to win. You saw it clearly, there was federal might on display, you saw reckless statement from Baba Fadahunsi, from Wole Oke. All of these we posted on social media. They were so reckless about using federal might and Baba Fadahunsi, in particular, walked into a police station and walked out gingerly and boasting that he will sue those who manipulated and obvious statement from him in which he was telling the whole world … Wole Oke said his own in a different manner. Anybody who doesn’t support Asiwaju whatever happens to him, he should accept it. I mean, what a chicanery! I’ve never seen anything so reckless and that is why I predicted to you that they will use federal might and there were places where the police fired tear gas at people who were not fighting anybody. They were going to exercise their franchise, vote peacefully and and boom, they started seeing tear gas. That is federal might.’
He added, ‘Then the number of governors who invaded Osun and were insulting their fellow governor is unprecedented. It is as a result of the fear of the Presidency. So everybody was falling over themselves as if they were robots just to please the President. There is no reason. I know some of these governors who are very close to Adeleke, extremely close but they had to come as if they were packed like sheep to Osun and they were saying all kind of nonsense.’