Osun election: APC reaping from Bola Ige’s murder — Soyinka

Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has described the defeat of Osun State Governor and governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the just concluded gubernatorial election in the state, Gboyega Oyetola, as “the voice of Bola Ige resounding from beyond the grave”.

Soyinka said the defeat of Governor Oyetola was a lesson that “speaks to other zones of rightful public expectations, equity, and just entitlements.”

He said this in a statement he personally issued on Sunday.

The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the election, Sen. Ademola Adeleke, had emerged as the winner of the poll, polling 403,371 votes, while Oyetola of the APC garnered 375,027 votes.

The candidate of the Action Democratic Party (ADP), Kehinde Atanda, came third with 10,104 votes, while Lasun Yusuff of the Labour Party garnered 2729 votes.

Reacting to the development, Soyinka said: “Those who conspired to catapult his destroyers to unmerited national prominence, to insult the memories of the living, and jettison basic ethical constraints, have been justly served.

“It is a lesson that speaks to other zones of rightful public expectations, equity, and just entitlements.

“One despairs but continues to hope that there are still receptive minds in which such lessons will germinate.

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“If we may adapt a wise saying from the ancients: the beast of burden, nicknamed Equity, ambles its mined course to destination but, sooner or later, that donkey arrives.”

Prof. Soyinka had in April said the endorsement of a former deputy governor of Osun State, Sen. Iyiola Omisore, as the APC National Secretary by President Muhammadu Buhari would hinder judicial inquiries into Bola Ige’s death because the former deputy governor is a prime suspect in the murder case.

The Nobel laureate further stated that a man, who was guilty of attacking the Minister of Justice in the presence of people was not fit to emerge as the National Secretary of the ruling party.

In his reaction, Omisore, who was arraigned in court in 2002 for Ige’s murder but later acquitted alongside 10 others tried for the case, described as “unnecessary propaganda”, the mentioning of him as a prime suspect in the murder of the former governor of old Oyo State.

The former deputy governor expressed displeasure that a decade after the Bola Ige murder case, Prof. Soyinka still referred to him as a prime suspect, despite being cleared by the court.

The Star