Osun APC: Youth Move to Reorganise Party, Turn it to ” Winning Machine” Ahead of 2023 Elections

Osun APC: Youth Move to Reorganise Party, Turn it to ” Winning Machine” Ahead of 2023 Elections.

TEXT OF THE SPEECH IN A PRESS CONFERENCE ADDRESSED BY THE OSUN APC YOUTH IN OSOGBO ON AUGUST 2, 2022

The good people of Osun, gentlemen of the press, ladies and gentlemen,
It is with great sadness that we have come out today to express our feelings on the events recent in our state and the state of our party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The July 16th governorship election in Osun has come and gone, but the aftermath will remain with us for a long time to come with prospect of its deleterious consequences for our party in the state and coming elections.
Our party lost a governorship election we should have won. It’s like we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, bringing to a halt the progressive train that began a glorious movement 12 years ago in Osun. We practically surrendered the governorship of the state to a decimated, fractious and disoriented opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

HOW WE GOT TO THIS SORRY PASS
The journey to this humiliating defeat began in 2018 with the unjust imposition of the candidate, Alhaji Gboyega Oyetola, from the wrong electoral zone, Osun Central when the people of Osun were expecting our party to field a candidate from Osun West.
We had to leverage on the goodwill of the outgoing APC government, the charm and charisma of the then Governor Rauf Aregbesola and the relative strength of our party and members in the state, to be able to just manage to win the election.
Once the new government that had just a thin veneer of legitimacy was inaugurated, it began a bizarre and ruinous process of delinking itself from the popular and well accepted immediate past administration and the dutiful party leaders and members that made its election possible. This is in gross and ominous violation of our fathers proverb that says a river that delinks from its source will soon dry up.
The government divided the party into Ileri Oluwa and others. Government and party positions became the exclusive right of Ileri Oluwa partisans while other members were excluded. This was even taken further with the arrest and prosecution of party members who do not belong to the Ileri Oluwa caucus.
To make matters worse, the government and its cabinet members began an open attack on the person of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola. The most visible achievement of the government without any doubt was the undoing of the cardinal programmes of his administration in education, political restructuring and others. While some programmes were reversed, others were simply stopped. The excuse then was that the people wanted it that way. We should ask now why the same people who demanded for the reversal of the eight years legacies could not vote for the governor’s re-election? We should also ask why the consultations that engineered the reversal could not deliver the votes in the end?
But we know that they are all infernal shenanigans. The government was acting a diabolical script of exclusion and smear against Aregbesola and anyone that identifies with him in the party. It so happens that after delinking itself from the Aregbesola’s administration and reversing his legacy programmes, Governor Oyetola had nothing with which to campaign and win the hearts of the people again. He fell precipitously at the polls.

THE ROLE OF THE PARTY
All these happened under the Prince Gboyega Famodun officially recognised leadership of the party in the state. The party not only supported these but was in cahoots with the government. Prince Famodun presided over the destruction of the party. The tradition in APC has been that elections are won on the strength of the party, from the ward upwards. But Ileri Oluwa became the party as anyone not in this caucus is considered an outsider and officially alienated by the government and the leadership of the party. For this reason, Prince Famodun no longer holds party meeting  and hardly come to the party secretariat again. Party business is either conducted in his house or mostly at the Oke Fia Government House.
Prince Gboyega Famodun and the current officially recognised executive committee in the state have acted with malice aforethought, gross incompetence, impunity and ill will in the last four years. This cost us the governorship we fought so hard with blood and tears to win from PDP.
As bad as this is, it is just a foretaste of what is to come. The people of Osun are resolute in telling us that it is not our party they are angry with but our candidate and the leadership of our party; that is why they did not vote for us, even with the money our candidate spent on the election like a drunken sailor.
This is going to get worse with the coming general election in February next year as we hold the presidential and other elections into state and national legislative offices, unless we address the drift now!

OUR DEMANDS
In order to address this emergent clear and present danger, we unequivocally make the following demands:
The dissolution of all party structures from the ward to the state level
The setting up of an independent caretaker committee to oversee the restructuring of the party and turn it into an election winning machine again
Composition of an all-inclusive party executive structures from wards to state level within 90 days; and
The redistribution of the state and federal legislative tickets in an all inclusive manner to reflect true membership structure and tendencies.
This in our humble opinion is the way forward from the logjam we found ourselves in the APC and unless we urgently take these steps, we stand the grave risk of suffering worse consequences in the coming elections.
I thank you all for listening.
God bless APC
God bless the good people of Osun

Abosede Busayo Oluwaseun
Ward 10 Unit 8, Boluwaduro LG, Osun State.
APC Membership Registration no: OS/TAN/05/01865
Voter Identification Number: 90F5B1AD3F295955293