Senator Iyiola Omisore, a former deputy governor of Osun State, was in the Senate from 2003-2011. He is eying the Osun State Government House again, this time as governor. In this interview, Omisore bares his mind on the 2014 governorship election in the state, his gubernatorial ambition, how the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, may boycott the election if the Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega, fails to remove the state Resident Electoral Commissioner, the state as presently run by Governor Rauf Aregbesola, the late Bola Ige murder saga, among others. Excerpts:
You want to be the governor of Osun State. How prepared are you?
We are praying that Professor Jega will comply with the court ruling and he will not allow INEC to perpetuate electoral fraud, because we will not do any election under the current INEC in Osun State. As we are now, we have lost confidence completely in Osun State INEC and even in Professor Jega’s leadership of INEC. Our zonal representative is Professor Olorode, an Action Congress of Nigeria card-carrying member, he is a columnist in The Nation and he supports Senator Bola Tinubu all the time. So, we are in trouble; INEC must remove Professor Olorode, South West coordinator of INEC, and Ambassador Akeju, Osun State Resident Electoral Commissioner, for us to have an election that we can participate in, in the state.
Once an umpire is not trusted, what do you expect? Once the referee is deemed to have taken a position, of course he would just be awarding penalties anyhow for his favoured team to have cheap goals. We have seen this thing before, it isn’t as if we are crying wolf where there is none.
ACN is relying solely on rigging. Aregbesola has lost control and he is panicking already. I have said it that they spent about N1 billion on hotels’ bills on their Lagos guests, and the ACN replied by saying, is there any limit to the amount of money one can spend on hotel bills?
They spent N460 million on chartering of aircraft between Lagos and Ibadan alone; they admitted that they awarded contract to Samiya, an unknown name.
These are weighty allegations senator; do you have proof?
The Samiya they gave N19billion contract, I am a professional engineer, I haven’t seen them on any contract in the last 20 years in this country. They are putting Aregbesola’s billboards on federal highways, I haven’t seen that kind of thing before. Deliberately confusing the public! On Kwara-Ila-Odo boundary, you will see Aregebesola there. Even in my town, dualisation of Lagere—to Enuwa, Ilesa by pass, you will see ACN billboard, just to confuse the public.
There is no single tap running in Osun now. When I was in the Senate, I facilitated money to be released to repair the turbine; it is where I stopped that they have left it. That’s why we want to go on rescue mission in 2014 to save ourselves from this man: an engineer in Lagos for eight years and an Ogbeni in Osun for two years.
As you prepare for this rescue mission, there’s always been the issue of the murder of the former Attorney General of the Federation, Chief Bola Ige, which you were charged with but acquitted. How do you intend to tackle this seeming encumbrance, the late Ige murder challenge?
Actually, what has been helping me is the sympathy from the people. In Yoruba land, in our culture, when you are framed up and you go through a horrendous trial, people sympathize with you; that has been the secret of my political success.
But the Action Congress of Nigeria has been latching on this and I have taken them to court for false prosecution and ….
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