By Olayemi Oke
Two months after being rejected by the good people of Ogun State, the Ogun People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Hon Ladi Adebutu, is still at his devious antics, trying to whip up sentiments where there is none in the course of giving his followers false hope.
Like all sore losers, Adebutu is playing to the gallery, portraying himself as the victim while sponsoring fake news against the person and office of the Governor of Ogun State, an office which he sought to occupy by subterfuge and for which he was treated like the outlaw that he truly is by the perceptive, highly vigilant and unrepentantly progressive Ogun populace.
Adebutu suborned nasty bloggers to write fake news, including the claim that Prince Dapo Abiodun had sent the Akarigbo of Remo to beg his father (Sir Kessington Adebutu) to prevail on him (Ladi Adebutu) to withdraw his petition at the Ogun State Election Petitions Tribunal!
In his desperation to be governor through the backdoor, Adebutu treated a distinguished royal throne with untrammeled contempt, showing that he is nothing but a politically immatured office seeker for whom respect for royalty means nothing. The Yoruba say that even if a dog is going wild, it ought to recognize the threat of fire (Ti aja ba n sinwin, a mo oju ina). Adebutu should have played his political games without dragging the royal throne into it. The fact that he could do that through his media ruffians shows that he respects no boundaries where his vaulting ambition is concerned. Think about it: if an election loser could drag royalty through the mud with fake news, what would he do if he somehow manages to cheat his way into Government House?
The media blitzkrieg is apparently to portray himself as somebody who did well at the gubernatorial election but was cheated. Yet this is the same candidate who committed electoral misconduct; the same person whose money distribution agents were arrested during the polls by the security agencies and are being investigated and processed for court appearance by the EFCC and the police for the infractions they committed. Adebutu and his media horde mislead the unsuspecting with fake news so brazenly and so shamelessly that even the devil would blush at their sheer duplicity and moral decadence.
Besides, their singsong that Prince Dapo Abiodun defeated them by only 13,915 votes makes them a laughing stock among the voting populace. In the first instance, by admitting that the Governor indeed defeated them during the March 18 gubernatorial poll, they are undermining their claim that they actually won the election. Secondly, their claim that Governor Abiodun’s margin of victory is narrow and therefore untenable flies in the face of logic and evidence. When you look at some of the governors that have just been elected, some of them defeated their opponents with less than 13,000 votes. The margins of victory in the Taraba, Adamawa and Zamfara governorship elections were all slim. So why the noise about 13,915 vote margin?
By how many votes did Rauf Aregbesola defeat Olagunsoye Oyinlola? What makes Governor Dapo Abiodun’s victory so plain and so self-evident is that out of the 26 House of Assembly seats in the state, APC won 17 while PDP won 9. So by what logic does a party with nine state assembly seats trump a party with 17 state assembly seats? Or are we in a season of abracadabra mathematics where 9 is more than 17? During his last election, Ibikunle Amosun also won 17 local governments.
Instead of waiting for their petition to be adjudicated on by the Tribunal, Ladi Adebutu and his gang have become the petitioner/complainant, the judge and media advocate at the same time, trying to whip up unnecessary sentiments, a strategy which is doomed to failure.
In the history of this country, there’s never been an individual that engaged in the kind of monumental antics like the PDP failed candidate who was accused of printing cards preloaded with N10,000 each in bids to curry votes from unwilling electorate during the March 18 election. These are a bunch of corrupt, shameless undemocratic elements. That could be reckoned as electoral money laundering and brigandage for which they should face severe consequences. They deserve to spend time in jail, not government.
Olayemi Festus Oke, a broadcast journalist, lives in Abeokuta
