There was tension in Ilase and Ibokun in Obokun Local Government Area of Osun State as the peoples suspected to be members of the Peoples Democratic Party attacked the campaign train of the All Progressives Congress led by Governor Rauf Aregbesola to the communities.
It was said that the hoodlums attacked the governor and the APC members, who were in the communities to campaign for their party and the contestants for various available positions in the March and April general elections.
An eye witness account revealed that Aregbesola and his entourage had gone to pay homage to the traditional ruler of the town, the Onilase of Ilase-Ijesa, when the crisis started.
Several APC members sustained various degrees of injury following the attack.
It was gathered that posters of contestants, APC flags and the podium on which the governor was to address the gathering were also destroyed.
However, the PDP said it was not true that his members attacked the APC supporters
In a telephone interview, the chairman of the PDP in the state, Alhaji Gani Ola-Oluwa, said the APC have always been attacking the PDP members, wondering why the Aregbesola and the APC are linking the PDP with the Ilase and Ibokun weekend attacks.
Ola-Oluwa urged the people of the state to disregard claim that the PDP members attacked the APC supporters, saying the APC is only seeking peoples’s sympathy.
But according to a statement by the governor through his media aide, Semiu Okanlawon, an APC female member’s ear was slashed with matchet.
Aregbesola condemned the attack which he described as barbaric.
The statement said that the hoodlums shot into the air sporadically to scare the waiting APC crowd before freely destroying the flags, posters and the campaign podium.
“In the melee, people had to scamper to safety as the PDP thugs had a field day unleashing mayhem on innocent people. When the governor returned to the campaign ground, he was shocked with what he saw, describing it as callous and condemnable.
He, therefore, called on security agencies to investigate what he describes as unprovoked attack and called on PDP “to desist from the ignoble act.
“We, as a party, are responsible and peace-loving. We are loved by the people. It is those who do not have electoral value that will attack the same people they ought to patronise for votes,” the governor said. We are popular and we are on ground. This people resort to violence because they know that they don’t have the support of the people.
“We, however, remain undaunted. We will not the cowed by anybody in the state. In the last four years, my government has restored peace to the state. We call on security agencies to be proactive and deal with anyone whose sole agenda is to cause violence in the state.”
The governor called on APC members to remain calm and law-abiding, saying that they should refrain from returning violence for violence.
Also, the All Progressives Congress in the state has warned the PDP that it will not profit from impunity in its resort to violence in the run-up to the March 28th and April 11th Presidential and General elections, because, “there will be consequences locally and internationally.”
Also, reacting to the violence last weekend in Ilase and Ibokun, the party in a statement by its spokesperson, Kunle Oyatomi, said that “the murderous nature of PDP violence in several APC states of the federation is clear evidence of desperation borne out of the frustration that in spite of everything the PDP has done to douse people’s support for the APC, its popularity continues to rise.
According to the APC: “The more violent the PDP gets anywhere in the country – especially in the state of Osun, the more unpopular it becomes, and the more of a nuisance the party makes itself. The PDP in Osun has acquired a notoriety for violence, believing that it enjoys impunity through the protective shield of Federal Might.”
