The Labour Party (LP) in Ondo State has berated the embattled governor of the State, Dr Olusegun Agagu for surreptitiously sponsoring violence with a view to intimidating the Election Petition Tribunal into giving him an undeserved favourable verdict saying that justice must be allowed to be done. The party equally accused Agagu of being a violent man masquerading under the garb of a lover of peace while his actions and inactions portend him as a desperate man out to tenaciously hang unto the mandate he stole at the April 14, 2007 election in the State by all means.

LP which rapped Agagu in a release issued by its Director of Press, Mr. Kolawole Olabisi on the heel of a sponsored story by the Agagu government in the press in which some faceless militants threatened to cause mayhem in Ondo State should the Tribunal cancel the votes in the riverine areas of the State and declare Dr Olusegun Mimiko of the LP as the winner of the April 14, 2007 Governorship election.

Specifically Dr. Mimiko had called for the invalidation of the unlawful votes from the Southern Senatorial District namely from Okitipupa, Ilaje, Ese-Odo and Irele LGs saying that election there were not allowed to hold while government official hijack the electoral process and urged the Jusatice Garba Nabaruma led-Tribunal to declare him as Governor having won more than 2/3 of the LGs in the State where lawful votes occurred. But while describing the faceless militants who masqueraded under the equally phantom Coastal Vigilante Force (VGF) who threatened to cause violence should Mimiko be declared winner if election in the riverine areas as the creation of Agagu and his minions, the LP wondered why this same group had not gone on violence when the Tribunal nullified the elections of the two Constituencies seats in the House of Assembly in Agagu’s local government (Oktipupa I&II), Ilaje and that of Ese-Odo?“Why should they suddenly wake up now when Agagu’s phantom and Pyrrhic victory where it has been proven without any iota of doubt that lawful election did not hold in all these areas where he was given fantastic votes higher than what INEC had on their Voters Registers is on the verge of being invalidated? Isn’t it an admission of the fact that Agagu knows that the game is up and the only thing left is to start intimidating the Tribunal with hints of violence?

“The truth is that Ondo people voted for Mimiko overwhelmingly and no violence whatsoever will happen when he is declared as the rightful owner of the mandate which Agagu usurped. Indeed, the people are only waiting with anxiety for the Tribunal to give Mimiko the victory so that they can celebrate the victory which they have been patiently waiting for since Aril 14 lat year.

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“Truly, Agagu intends to use the media to get what he could not get by the use of raw violence to pressurize members of the Tribunal to give him a favourable verdict. This he had planned to do when he surreptitiously released a whopping N500million for the organization of a 3million man-march last week but which flopped woefully because we got wind of this dastard act on time and called on the law enforcement agents which foiled it. He had intended to bring this hired thugs from all over the nation to the State to start a procession carrying placards which would warn the Tribunal to return Agagu or Ondo State would boil? Does this action portray a man of peace? The answer is a resounding no.

LP recalled that it was Agagu who was behind the invitation of a faction of the members of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) to the hitherto peaceful riverine communities of Ilaje and Ese-Odo when he engaged their services to rig election in his favour in the area during the vexed election last April. After the election, they actually kidnapped top PDP chieftains including the State Secretary to Government, Isaac Kekemeke who they accused of facilitating their deal with State government and failed to pay the N500million agreed upon. Agagu had to part with over N50million for some of the hostages to be released by the MEND boys. Who then is the sponsor of violence in Ondo State? “And doesn’t this also show Agagu as a violent man?” Olabisi asked rhetorically.

He, therefore, urged the people of the State not to be bothered by the antics of Agagu and his acolytes saying that soon, very soon, justice would be done and the whole world will see how Agagu rigged the April Election adding, “Agagu will then come face-to-face with the truth to the effect that on parade in Nigeria of today is a new Judiciary that does not easily lend itself to intimidation and propaganda.” 

 

 

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