Date Published: 08/07/09
7th August 2009. PRESS RELEASE.
LAGOS AC CONDEMNS AREGBESOLA’S ARREST, CALLS FOR HIS IMMEDIATE RELEASE.
The Lagos State chapter of the Action Congress has condemned in the strongest term, the arrest of the governorship candidate of the AC in Osun State, Engr. Rauf Aregbesola by the police and called for his immediate and unconditional release.
In a release in Lagos, signed by the party’s Lagos State Publicity Secretary, Joe Igbokwe, the party said that the complicity of the police in the criminality of the PDP is a big threat to democracy and the peace and unity of this country and must be jettisoned or else we are heading for another crisis in this country.
“We note that the police is playing the dubious politics of the Osun PDP otherwise we wonder why they are harassing Aregbesola for a report which had been in the public domain for the past two years would be generating so much concern for the PDP government at both the federal and state levels and the police which had been so much indicted in the massive electoral fraud that has marked the present besmeared democracy.
“We are even surprised that it took the laudable ruling of the Appeal Tribunal for the re-opening of the Aregbesola petition before the Osun State government, the PDP and the police started this present political witch hunt, after they had done massive works to frustrate Aregbesola from securing his stolen mandate. We are not surprised that the intent of the present effort is to distract Aregbesola from the on-going trial of his case before the reconstituted tribunal. We are not surprised that a police force that had shown beyond all reasonable doubts that it is a criminal appendage of the misrule of the PDP is a willing tool in the present plot.
“While we call for the immediate and unconditional release of Aregbesola and the many other people reportedly being held by the police in the desperate bid to pervert justice, we want to call the attention of the Nigerian police to the open bribery of INEC officials to write fake results for Ido Osi as well as the call log scandal that happened in Osun State where a tribunal was subjected to undue corrupt influence by Oyinlola’s lawyer to pervert justice.
“We recall the tortuous and elaborate, expensive and complicated process Aregbesola has endured to prove the electoral fraud that happened in Osun State in May 2007 but it is understandable why the Nigerian Police that sees itself as an active extension of the PDP should be interested in distracting Aregbesola from obtaining justice. This is the reason it has suddenly become pro-active in the notorious agenda of the PDP and Oyinlola to frustrate Aregbesola. If they feel strongly that the police report Aregbesola has tendered for two years now in various tribunals was forged, why have they approached the courts to seek redress while they release the authentic report for all to see?
“We warn that nothing must happen to Aregbesola and that he must be released immediately and this massive plot must be called off because we still believe that the greatest enemies of Nigeria are the electoral fraudsters for which the police had been working for and not their persecuted victims like Aregbesola.”
Joe Igbokwe.
Publicity Secretary
Lagos AC
