Adeleke: ‘Aregbesola Did Not Directly Work For PDP, We Sold Liability To APC, Bought Asset’

A former Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Diran Odeyemi has said Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola did not help the PDP in the just concluded Osun governorship election.

Reports had emerged claiming that Aregbesola, a former Osun State governor, had secretly backed Senator Ademola Adeleke to defeat incumbent, Adegboyega Oyetola.

In an interview with Vanguard, Odeyemi stated that Aregbesola did not directly help the PDP, adding that his former commissioners only dumping the All Progressives Congress (APC).

He said: “Maybe the reason why they thought Aregbesola helped us was because some of his commissioners decamped to our party, just like we sold liability to them and bought assets from APC so it was on both camps, there was no time the party met with the minister or anybody to say come and help us win election. We knew we were going to win.”

The former PDP spokesperson said the party emerged victorious on a free and fair ground, without the help of Aregbesola or alliance with any faction.

Odeyemi said his party’s victory was a revenge carried out by the people of Osun against what the APC did to PDP in 2018.

“This is like a set of armed robbers, who rob you some of your properties, while they were sharing the goods one felt cheated and left the group and came back to tell us yes we actually robbed you of your victory but this around we apologize we are not going to participate.

“That was exactly what happened not that Aregbesola directly worked with us,” he said.

According to Odeyemi, both the PDP and the APC have been entangled with internal crises.

He said: “There were lots of our members, a former Deputy Governor for that matter, a former senatorial Chairman for that matter, they decamped to APC.

“We didn’t cry because  of that what we did was to restrategize. Here’s a Deputy Governorship candidate who could only win us 3,000 in the entire Ile-Ife and we reviewed the whole thing and said this man is not popular in Ile-Ife that we had to change him and because of that he decided to decamp and we told them what you are buying or the person that decamped to you is a liability.

“We will go to your camp and get asset and we got asset from them.”