*Says it has lost confidence in CP
Yinka Kolawole in Osogbo
Due to alleged incessant political thuggery in Osun State polity and frequent attacks on the All Progressives Congress (APC) members, the acting Chairman of the state APC, Sooko Tajudeen Lawal, yesterday called on the Inspector-General of Police (IG), Alikali Baba, to intervene in their plight and ensure the immediate removal of the state Commissioner of Police, Mr. Patrick Kehinde Longe, from the state.
Speaking yesterday at a press conference, Lawal noted that the PDP, Osun State Government and the state Police Command under Longe should be held responsible for any breakdown of law and order, as the general election approaches in a few days.
Lawal, who was represented by the party spokesperson, Chief Kola Olabisi, said he was worried that the main source of the APC concern about the pitiable security situation in the state since the inauguration of Governor Ademola Adeleke’s administration was that the police, which are the statutory security agency in the state, have not been doing enough to dispassionately maintain peace and order.
He posited that information also has it that the state chapter of the PDP has a discreet committee whose duty is to compile the names and addresses of the targeted APC members to be arrested and possibly attacked and killed.
According to him, “It was observed that the police are always looking away when our members are being attacked by the PDP thugs in Osogbo, Ede, Ilesa, Ijebu-Jesa, Ila-Orangun, Ikire, Iwo, Ikirun, Okuku, Ifetedo and other areas, which has made us to suspect and conclude that the police have not been maintaining neutrality in the discharge of their official responsibility. They favour the PDP.”
The APC state chief added: “The funniest aspect of the unsavoury development is that the political hoodlums who were arrested and brought down to the Police Command in Osogbo from Ifetedo few days ago were not even allowed to alight from the vehicle that brought them before they were surprisingly left off the hook based on the directive from the top.
“It was based on the totality of the insensitive attitude of the leadership of the Nigeria Police in Osun State to the plight of members of the party that we are making a clarion call for the transfer of the state Commissioner of Police, Longe, from our state.”
He alleged that Governor Adeleke and the PDP “had skillfully designed the indiscriminate arrest of APC members to be carried out by the pliable Divisional Police Officers (DPOs) who were transferred to their different duty posts amid criticisms by the party shortly after the current state Commissioner of Police, Longe, assumed office recently.
“We are thereore calling on the IG of Police to intervene in our plight by urgently effecting the transfer of the Osun State Commissioner of Police, Longe, as his best is found out not to be in the best interest of any genuine democratic setting.”
