By Chinedu Eze
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has fired back at the Chairman of all Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, for attacking the former Nigerian President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and PDP presidential candidate in 2019 election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
In a statement signed by the spokesman, PDP Presidential Campaign, Akin Osuntokun, the leading opposition party said, “If anyone has a case to answer before God and man, Oshiomhole would rank very high as a contender. From his mercenary escapades as labour leader through his scandal-ridden tenure as governor of Edo State to his equally scandal and hooliganism-ridden tenure as APC chairman, he surely is a formidable candidate for multiple lifetime penitence and purgatory.
“I bear first hand witness to his outing as a member (in his capacity as deputy president of the Nigeria Labour Congress) of a four-man civil society delegation invited to a classified debriefing session on the Presidential election annulment crisis rocking Nigeria by the German government in 1994. This would be my first encounter with the high level treachery that characterised that unfortunate episode in Nigerian history. They run with the hare and hunt with the wolf.”
Osuntokun also recalled that it was during his tenure as the NLC president that his Jekyll and Hyde career truly blossomed, noting, “it was labour racketeering at its most unconscionable. While shouting alluta during the day, these people were busy hobnobbing in the night seasons with officers and agents of the government on how to contrive the beginning and end of labour strikes.”
Osuntokun argued that Oshiomhole’s antecedence as governor of Edo State has been most authoritatively captured in the petition submitted to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) two years ago by Bishop Osadolor.
“Rather than take action to clear his name, he took shelter in the curious decision of the EFCC to ignore the petition.
“An innocent man would have been properly outraged and sued the petitioner for defamation of character rather than rely on the curious inaction of the EFCC. Despite constituting an eyesore and a festering wound in the conscience of public spirited Nigerians, it is consistent with the tragic hypocrisy of the Buhari government that its anti-corruption agencies have not deemed it fit to invite Oshiomhole to come and account for this monument to corruption.
The PDP campaign spokesman noted that instead of inviting the APC Chairman, he was rewarded with the chairmanship of the campaign of a president seeking re-election on the platform of fighting corruption.
“Of course, he wasted little time in drawing attention to the authenticity of how the maggot is always found in the company of putrefaction. This is why barefaced hooliganism and corruption have come, once again, to define his career–according to the First Lady, Mrs Aisha Buhari, Governors Amosun, Okorocha, Yari and similar casualties.”
