The Governor of Osun State, Rauf Aregbesola, said on Tuesday that the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, lost its relevance in the south-western part of Nigeria when former President Olusegun Obasanjo tore his membership card and left the party.
The governor made the assertion at Ikire, while leading the campaign train of the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Mudashiru Hussein, for Saturday’s Osun West senatorial bye-election.
According to him, the emergence of the All Progressives Congress at the centre had marked the end of the PDP’s reign in the country.
Mr. Argbesola said the PDP’s era had gone in Nigeria particularly in the south-west as many of the party’s founding fathers had dumped it.
He said the PDP had become a dead party in Nigeria, and those returning to it were returning to “vanity.”
The governor described the move to revive the PDP through the forthcoming bye-election as an exercise in futility.
“Why will any sensible politician at this time want to associate with a party that is not only drowning but dead in the South-West,” he said.
“It will be an exercise in futility for anybody to now want to wake up a dead horse through the July 8 Osun West Senatorial bye election when founding fathers of the party have not only deserted the party but wouldn’t want to associate with it.
“We are all living witnesses to how the former President openly at his ward declared that the PDP has gone beyond redemption, hence his declaration of the obituary of the party with symbolic trashing of his membership card.”
He also used the opportunity of the campaign to warn troublemakers especially the opposition parties whom he alleged, were planning to bring militants to unleash mayhem should the results not go their way.
“Why will anybody think that the people of Osun who stood firm even in the face of provocation during the last general election under the supervision of the PDP-led government then, would now waver from such determination?” he remarked.
“It is on record that despite the intimidation by the then security apparatus who invaded the state with weird looking officers who had strange looking dogs still could not deter our people from associating with our good governance. Why will they be deterred by militants?
“We use this medium to warn any militant who the opposition had contracted to think twice before coming to Osun as government is ever ready to use every lawful means at its disposal to smoke them out of the state.”