The candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the Ondo state governorship poll, Mr. Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN) has dismissed as laughable and ridiculous an allegation by the candidate of the Alliance for Democracy (AD), Chief Olusola Oke that the sum of N7 billion was being released to him to rig the election.
The Olusola Oke Campaign Committee had on Friday cried out to President Muhammadu Buhari over alleged plans by members of his cabinet to surreptitiously release the sum of N7 billion to Akeredolu from a bogus N10 billion infrastructural contract slated for Owo community of the State to perfect plans to rig the November 26, 2016 election in the State.
The Campaign Committe while raising this alarm in Akure on Friday, alleged that the plan was hatched in the Federal Ministry of Works, Abuja wherein a bogus contract was without due process mooted for works on some infrastructure in Owo area of the State where Akeredolu hails from and will divert a substantial part of the money towards the rigging of the election.
In a statement, the Chairman of the Publicity Committee of the Oke Campaign, Mr Kolawole Olabisi, stated “the boast of the APC which had been sedentary in its approach to canvassing for votes in the State is that they would rig this election even if only one vote is cast for them. They have been preaching it and now they have professed it with this dastard plan perfected and supervised by the top echelons of the Government to use government funds to make good their threat.”
However, Akeredolu, in a statement on Sunday by Kunle Adebayo, Secretary Communications Directorate of the Akeredolu Campaign Platform, stated “Oke’s tale by the moonlight is not only laughable and ridiculous but a complete exposure of the emptiness, desperation and confusion of a man who has lost a great portion of his ill-gotten fortune trying to purchase the people of Ondo state.
“Oke’s standard strategy was to intimidate and blackmail President Buhari to submission, but having discovered that the President is not the type of invertebrate and vulnerable Presidents they were used to in PDP, he has resorted to double speak, sycophancy and divisive sweet talking.
“To emphasize his mischief and lack of coordination, Oke on the one hand is praising the President as an adroit and incorruptible leader while on the hand he is accusing same Buhari of approving a phantom N10b sleaze fund to enthrone Oluwarotimi Akeredolu in this month’s election.
“It is pathetic and ridiculous that Oke still believes he is in his PDP days where all sorts of impunity, corruption and lawlessness were elevated to state policy. He needs to wake up to the fact that the days of crying wolf or robbing the nation’s till for personal political adventures are gone forever.
“As if the people of Ondo state are buffoons he takes them for, Oke has failed to state which session of the Federal Executive Council approved the contract? What is the specification of the project? Who is the contractor and in which community in Owo LG will the project be sited and for what duration? Since its a sleaze fund, Oke ought to have been courageous enough to in fact release facts about the Bank through which the imagined fund is being trafficked.
“These litany of lies even since the days of our party’s primaries have openly shown that Oke is merely a pretender and selfish ambitionist for whom nothing mischievous is impossible to achieve selfish goals.
Indeed, Nigerians can now see that while seeking the ticket of our party, Olusola Oke never believed in the Change preached by the President. If he had had faith in a new Nigeria, his short stint in the President’s party ought to have taught him that such impunity, crooked conscience and reckless style of governance are absolutely impossible with this President.”
Akeredolu further added that “It is absolutely clear to the entire Ondo state electorate that Olusola Oke is desperately looking for a sparing partner to provoke recognition, credibility and attention for him and his hopeless excursion to capture Ondo state.”
