Just few days after Aremo Olusegun Osoba, former two-time governor of Ogun State launched his book, Battlelines Adventures in Journalisn and Politics, to mark his 80th birthday, Senator Femi Okurounmu has come out heavy on the All Progressives Congress, APC, chieftain, calling him a liar, traitor and a double faced man.
Senator Okurounmu, 80, whose memoirs, The Dream, is billed for launch, disclosed this in an interview with The Editor newspaper.
In the interview, Okorounmu, who was the Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee on the 2014 National Conference, was unsparing, describing Osoba as an unfaithful apostle of the June 12 struggle.
“Those who know Osoba know that he has always been a double-faced politician. One face, he will want people to see him as a progressive, on the other face; he is working with the security forces. Osoba has always been an agent of the security forces.
He has one leg in the military and the other leg in the progressives’ camp. If he has never been told that, I am telling you now. So, when he narrated what he went through in his book, of course, for anybody who is a double agent, such person will get into trouble.
So, he got into trouble in the early stage of the annulment of June 12 because he has been a close collaborator with (Ibrahim) Babangida who annulled the election. It was Babangida that sponsored Osoba’s governorship in Ogun state in 1992.
So, we all know that Osoba was a double agent. While being a close associate of Babangida, he was now pretending to be supporting MKO Abiola. That was what got him into trouble with the military.
Initially, when Abiola’s election was annulled and everybody thought it will be a short struggle for Abiola to reclaim his mandate, Osoba pretended to be with us in that struggle so that he can also benefit if Abiola eventually became President.
That pretense of being with us is what got him into trouble and he got detained. In fact, people like Gani Fawehinmi had to go and fight for him in court. But as soon as he realised that the struggle will not be a brief one and the military are not prepared to handover to Abiola, he abandoned the struggle.
When the late Sani Abacha formed his five political parties, we in Afenifere decided that we will not participate in any of the five parties. Osoba was present when we took that decision but as soon as we left the place, he decamped and took his followers and they all went and joined Abacha’s transition.
So, Osoba participated fully in Abacha’s transition in all the elections conducted from ward to local government level, Osoba’s men participated. So, he was not part of the NADECO struggle.
Osoba is a liar and traitor. He tells lie and wants to distort history because he knows he has betrayed Nigerians, he has betrayed the progressives cause and the Yoruba people. I believe that anybody who participated in Abacha’s transition betrayed Abiola. It is as simple as that. So for a traitor, he is just trying to justify his treacherous actions and throw blames on other people. Osoba is a traitor,” he stated.
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