Stop Treating State Security with Levity, APC Tells Adeleke

Yinka Kolawole in Osogbo

Worried by the high level of insecurity of the inhabitants of Osun State before, during and after the last series of elections in the state, the state chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has called on Governor Ademola Adeleke to stop treating the security issues with levity.

No fewer than 30 members of the opposition APC members were allegedly sent to the great beyond by the militia wing of the state chapter of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) through which the elections were fraudulently won by extra-judicial means by the PDP’s candidates across the state.

Again, on Wednesday and Friday last week, two incidents of kidnapping along Osogbo-Ikirun Road were reported in which the victims were said to be in captivity of the kidnappers as at the time of making this statement with the exception of a woman whose release was secured by the police on Sunday. 

The Osun State acting Chairman of the APC, Mr. Sooko Tajudeen Lawal, in a statement that was issued yesterday in Osogbo by the APC’s Director of Media and Information, Mr. Kola Olabisi, said that Governor Adeleke is not getting it right in the area of security as his four-month-old administration has not done anything spectacular to excel in providing security of lives and property.

Lawal explained that it was sad that the governor has not deemed it fit to say a word on the kidnapping incidents.   

He further noted that cases of kidnapping, abduction of innocent people and politically motivated killings have been on the increase since November 27, when Adeleke was sworn in.

The state APC acting chairman stated that it was strictly against the spirit of empathy for a governor to be junketing in Abuja, the nation’s capital, for several days running while some of the citizens he is constitutionally required to protect have been led into the bush by the kidnappers.

It would be recalled that Adeleke left for Abuja last Tuesday, precisely seven days ago.

Lawal said: “A caring governor would have either condemned the two incidents of the kidnapping of the people in his territory within three days interval or rushed back from Abuja as the number one security officer of the state.

“It is saddening that as I speak, Governor Adeleke has no comment of condemnation to his credit on all the murder incidents that happened so far in his four-month-old administration.

“It is pathetic and strange that Governor Adeleke could be feeling at ease in his comfort zone in Abuja when kidnappers have converted his state to an enabling environment for operation.

“When he was attacked recently by PDP thugs in Ikirun, the governor denied it. But the thugs have been arraigned in the court thereby justifying our claim that thuggery activities have been on the rise since Senator Ademola Adeleke became the governor.

“His handling of Osun’s affairs has shown that governance of a state is not a tea party, which is the reason why it is not the best arrangement to make the state a laboratory for greenhorns in the management of the affairs of human beings and resources.”