Details: Oyetola Accused Of Fresh Plot To Embarrass Aregbesola

Charles Oyelesi

The battle of influence between the 64year old minister for interior Rauf Aregbesola and his successor as the Governor of Osun State, 66year old Gboyega Oyetola appears far from over.

The talks on the streets of Osun state are that claims of a “truce” are far-fetched.

And one of the reasons being adduced for this is fresh allegations by Aregbesola’s sympathizers that Governor Oyetola’s crew is ceaselessly plotting to embarrass the minister with the end objective of portraying him to have lost “face” and “support” in Osun state.

Loyalists of Aregbesola insist that the recent protest against the minister in Osun state on the day he was billed to commission the Osun State Command office complex of Nigerian Correctional Service (Friday, July 23, 2021) has the fingerprints of Oyetola and his crew.

Pensioners in large number, bearing different placards, assembled infront of the Osun State House of Assembly – directly opposite the complex Aregbesola was scheduled to commission – as early as 9.am, before moving here and there accusing, the minister of mismanaging the contributory funds contributed by pensioners while he was governor.

Aregbesola, the husband of the very frank Alhaja Sherifat was the Governor of Osun state from November 2010 to November 2018.

Some of the placards read “Aregbesola, where is the N60b contributed by pensioners?”, “Aregbe:- a true Muslim will not behave like that. Rauf you denied people their contributions right,” “Aregbesola, you are not a good leader to be celebrated,” “Osun state government, pay us our benefit.”

“Aregbesola and Oyetola belong to the same political party (All Progressives Congress), for the protesters who came well ahead of the Minister’s event to operate freely from the Osun State House of Assembly for hours, have media coverage, and did things that openly embarrasses the Minister on such a day tell a lot about Governor Oyetola and his government’s disposition to what was going” societynow.ng learned.

Societynow.ng, however, gathered that in what appeared to be an anticipatory approach to the “protest “ by the pensioners, Aregbesola’s team ensured a show of massive local support with the attendance of grassroots loyalists at the commissioning of the Nigerian Correctional service complex.

The further checks by societynow.ng revealed that what transpired on Friday was a “worsened form of the usual” between Aregbesola and Oyetola since their supremacy tussle broke out.

“There was always a parallel event or some other thing to portray Aregbesola as lacking local support whenever he had an event in Osun state now it has turned to outright embarrassing and from the look of things it will only get worse” societynow.ng learned.

The supremacy tussle between the duo reportedly started over Aregbesola’s alleged attempt to retain a vice grip on the APC structure in Osun state and influence in governance after Oyetola who was his Chief of Staff became the Governor.