Nobel laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, has attributed the loss of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the governorship election in Osun State to the sacrilege committed against late attorney general and minister of justice, Mr. Bola Ige.
Recall that Ige was a founding member of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) which morphed into Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and much later into APC through a marriage with Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the remnants of All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).
Ige who served as AGF during the administration of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, was murdered on December 23, 2001.
The national secretary of APC, Mr. Iyiola Omisore, who served as deputy governor of the state at the time of Ige’s death, was fingered as one of the suspects in Ige’s murder.
Speaking in an interview on Channels Television yesterday, Soyinka brought back the memories of the death and surmised that APC was punished for the act because “somebody who has been so heavily implicated in the death of a prominent member of that party, Bola Ige…has been given a position in that party (APC).”
He said it was shocking that the APC could make someone who was implicated in Ige’s murder one of its executives.
Although Soyinka avoided mentioning any name, he declared that the voice of Ige resounded from the grave in the governorship election in Osun.
“When the results began to come in, I had just returned (from overseas). It was like a welcome present because I saw that party (APC) being punished for that act of sacrilege,” he said.
“The two parties (APC and PDP) have become very confusing to start with. Members have moved across so much. There has been so much inter-marriage and the bloodline has diluted in many aspects, being polluted in many aspects.
“It even got to a stage where a prominent member of the APC actually articulated the sentiment of ‘Oh, come and join us and your sins will be forgiven’.
“It didn’t surprise me too much that somebody who has been so heavily implicated in the death of a prominent member of that party, Bola Ige, he is a founding member, that his memories should be so thrashed by consulting one of the prominent figures who featured in the events – forget whether he was innocent of the actual crime or not – was heavily implicated in the humiliation of that individual, that founding member of that party who was also the minister of justice of this nation.
“To actually catapult one of those crime suspects and proven contributors, and to find that that person has been given a position in that party (APC), in governance, and after the President (Muhammadu Buhari) had actually inaugurated a re-examination of that episode amongst other crimes, that is quite a bit of shock. And I mentioned at a time, that is a bit of sacrilege. And remember, this Osun is Bola Ige’s state.”
Recall that Ademola Adeleke of the PDP polled 403,371 votes, 28,344 more than the incumbent governor and closest rival, Oyetola of the APC polled 375,027 votes.
