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Charge me to court, if...
-osoba dares Daniel
SIMON IRO IBE, (Political
Editor) and KOLA ADEPOJU,
Abeokuta
FORMER governor of Ogun State Chief
Segun Osoba yesterday urged the administration of incumbent Gov. Gbenga Daniel
and the police to charge him to court if they were convinced he was behind last
Tuesday’s attack in Ilaro on the convoys of Daniel and his wife, Olufunke.
Chief Osoba told Daily Champion in an interview in
Lagos that he was still waiting for them to prefer charges against him.
Gov. Daniel, who defeated Osoba in last
year’s gubernatorial election in Ogun State, had insisted that Osoba sponsored
the attack on his wife, who was attending a children’s de-worming programme in
Ilaro when she was attacked by stone-throwing persons, and which incident forced
the governor to the town, only to be accosted too.
Though Osoba denied the allegation, the
crisis between both personalities worsened when last Friday night policemen from
Zone II Headquarters, Onikan, Lagos which covers Ogun and Lagos states picked up
the former governor, questioned him and reportedly released him after he signed
a N50 million bail bond.
Both political titans in Ogun State,
however, maintained their individual positions on the attack.
The Ogun State government insisted that
Chief Osoba organised the attack during an Alliance for Democracy (AD) meeting
he held in Ilaro.
But Osoba told Daily Champions that
if he was behind the incident, then, he should be charged to court.
"I’m waiting for when they will prefer
formal charges against me and then we’ll meet in court," the former two-time
governor of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s state, said.
He pointed out that those suggesting that
he plotted to assassinate Daniel were "jokers," that the governor was not
scheduled to be in the town on the fateful day but went there on the spur of the
moment, after the incident involving his wife.
"Daniel was not billed to be there that
day, so how would I plan an assassination when he was not expected to be there?
What will I gain from assassinating him?"
Osoba queried rhetorically.
He explained that he was in the town for a
meeting of his party, the AD that had been scheduled over a month before the
incident, noting that another such meeting had been fixed for November 24 this
year.
"Can’t I move freely in this country?
Can’t I attend scheduled meetings any longer in Ogun State? What is the offence
in being in a given town on a given day?" he further queried.
Meanwhile, lawmakers representing Ogun
State in the National Assembly have introduced a new dimension to the crisis
alleging the attack was an assassination attempt on Gov. Daniel.
Addressing a joint press conference under
the aegis of caucus of Ogun State national Assembly members at Gateway Hotel,
Abeokuta, the lawmakers said that the attack was more than a mere assassination
attempt, alleging that the perceived political opponents of the governor met at
Ilaro twice before the said attack.
Hon. Lekan Mustapha, who read the speech
the lawmaker’s jointly prepared, said investigations had revealed that the
attack was not just a mere student’s protest against power outage but an attempt
to kill the governor.
According to him, "We honorable members of
National Assembly, Ogun State caucus, have it on good authority that the mayhem
unleashed on the convoys of Governor of Ogun State and his wife at Ilaro on
Tuesday, 19th October, 2004 was not an ordinary protest."
"It was a planned and viciously executed
assassination plot that failed," he alleged.
Mustapha stressed that "investigation has
shown beyond reasonable doubt that some prominent opposition politicians in this
state converged at Ilaro prior to the arrival of the wife of the governor who
was billed to perform a de-worming exercise as part of her Child Care programme."
The lawmakers claimed that "the desperate power seeking
politicians met at two different locations during which the plan to assassinate
Governor Daniel were hatched," adding "all the personalities involved are now
known to us."
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