On account of series of calls and text messages I had received in the last few weeks as the Chairman/Convener of Promoters of Labour Party Ideals (CPLPI), it has become expedient that, I, Aremo Adeola Adepoju, on behalf of reputable members of the congress, need to run a round of Integrity Tests on our One-and-Only Governor, Dr Abdulrahamon Olusegun Mimiko. Dr Mimiko, his lieutenants, followers, admirers, journalists and all labour leaders, please let us run through these fast as our dear Dr Mimiko prepares his “Answers” to this set of tests:
Sure, Nigerians would like to know why I was so hard on our dear Dr Mimiko and his “compatriots” such as Barr Kayode Ajulo, Barr Dan Nwanyanwu, Alhaji A. A. Salam and other miscreants they inaugurated and foisted on our dear party and its genuine members in all the states of the fedeartion. Honestly, I have no personal grouse against any of the aforementioned names; nothing personal against them except the issues on matters of integrity and principle. Since the emergence of Dr Mimiko as the only governor on the platform of Labour Party (LP) in Nigeria, he should please tell Nigerians why he failed to strengthen the party that offered him accommodation while he was in the political wilderness as an orphan?
2. He should tell all the party faithful across Nigeria the genuine reason he created divisions in all the strongholds of the party in the South West, especially Oyo State. He brought in these typical Nigerian politicians and agreed and empowered them to open a parallel office at Oke-Ado close to the Nigerian Tribune office at Imalefalafia, Ibadan? Dr Mimiko should tell us why he dissolved or rendered the EXCOs in Oyo, Osun, Ekiti, Lagos and Ogun inactive. He should honourably tell us the real reason he dumped LP for People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in 2014. He should also tell us why he dissolved the LP state offices and converted the LP Secretariat in Ondo State to the PDP secretariat in the state.
3. Maybe Dr Mimiko should please tell us his own definition of anti-party. While being seen as the national leader of the party by the virtue of the political office he occupied in the rank and file of the party, he was surreptitiously hobnobbing and concluding arrangement/alliance with PDP in company of his men listed above. That’s politics? He should tell us openly, in fact, make it public, how much he collected from former president Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ) to prosecute his 2015 election. He should tell Nigerians how much he gave, out of the spoils, to all his lackeys particularly Dan Nwanyawu, Hon. Joseph Akinlaja, Alhaji Salam and Kayode Ajulo and all other political jobbers swarming around him before and during the 2015 elections. Or is the support just on a pro bono?
4. Mr ex-Governor and his team should tell us the reason they were afraid to work with the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC)? He and his team should tell us why they prefer to work with Alhaji A. A. salam who has a corruption case dangling on his neck at Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
5. Dr Mimiko should tell us his moral and financial contributions to the development of LP to make it a formidable party in any of the state chapters in Nigeria. I, Aremo Adeola Adepoju, led a team from Oyo that donated One Million Naira (N1m) for his second term electioneering campaigns. For whoever that may like to crosscheck, we have an indisputable record to support our claim whereas we benefitted nothing morally and financially from Mr Iroko throughout his tenure as the Ondo State governor, except the betrayal of handing over our party to political prostitutes. To completely fetter us and scuttle the authentic LP structure in Oyo State, “His Excellency” created “co-chairmanship”, an arrangement which was totally alien and aberrant to the party’s constitutional provisions. All this illegality was perpetrated under the watch of our so called “Barr” Ajulo and “Barr” Dan Nwanyanwu. It is this jankara and anything goes politics that Mr Iroko and Co. are bringing back to re-launch again?
6. Several people had asked why I parted way with Dr Mimiko, my one-time leader; many people had also challenged me on my hard stance on ex-Gov Mimiko before and after I finally stopped being his loyal follower. My answer has always been that I and other genuine members withdrew all we were doing for him. We were doing all we were doing genuinely to promote our party and all that it stands for! And being the only LP governor in Nigeria, we gave him all the support needed. Anytime he came to Ibadan I used to lead teeming members of the party on solidarity to welcome him to the state. I led over 300 members of our party to Abuja Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja, when he was being awarded the Best Governor of the Year by the Nigerian Tribune. The Team Oyo, at the event, was so conspicuous that the spokesman of Gen Ibrahim Badamosi Babangiga (IBB) approached me to express his joy on our solidarity in support of our erstwhile leader. I was later told by the wife of the governor, Mrs Olukemi Mimiko that Dr Awolowo Dosumu asked her about who sponsored us. The former First Lady said she told her we had always come on solidarity for the governor on own volition. Mama, why have you allowed our governor to forsake and try to destroy us? Why are you allowing him to be doing all this?
On several instances, I was often reminded that I once referred to ex-Governor Mimiko as a locomotive engine that moved Labour Party. Yes, I never denied that and will never deny it! I once referred to him as a locomotive engine but I am one of the millions of Nigerians on LP platform that Dr Mimiko disappointed because of his personal aggrandizement and selfish ambition. In fact, we taught Iroko would be a shield for millions of the Nigerian masses, especially in LP but he turned out to be, without conscience, a stock of tree that could not be a rampart to any genuine LP members. He showed his true colour as a nomadic politician when he threw decorum to the winds and jeopardized the aspiration of millions of genuine patriots and social democracy allies when he handed over the party to the bourgeoisie and left the party after the damage had been done without any recourse to the ideals of the party. Though he denied his preparedness to decamp to PDP then, after collapsing the authentic virile structures of LP, he abandoned us for PDP, the party that once denied him to stalemate his political career.
Mr “Iroko” denied thousands of Oyo State authentic members their right as members of LP after the state chapter had remitted millions of naira as their dues to the party’s National Secretariat under “Barr” Dan Nwanyanwu and Alhaji Salam as chairman and secretary respectively. When Iroko and Co. could not find a way to sandwich us after we had paid our members’ dues from Oyo State which is a stringent condition to fulfill to be a bona fide member of LP, they introduced the idea of “Co-Chairman”, an idea that has no legal backing in our party. We have been vindicated at last because those “dishonourable” men that Iroko then promoted and wickedly imposed on us in conjunction with Dan Nwanyawu, Akinlaja, Salam and Ajulo had gone back to their respective parties or other available parties. We had challenged their illegality in court, however, because people who were still card carrying members of PDP at election time were made the LP’s candidates at election, some of whom are still in office today collecting the Nigerian tax payers’ money as salary and emoluments. Up till this moment, the Oyo State LP still has a case at the Federal High Court, Abuja, over this illegality that Mimiko created in the state as Dr Ajulo once denied a court summon from a court bailiff.
7. Dr Mimiko should tell us why I, Aremo Adeola Adepoju and some other members of the party were expelled illegally from the party for not participating in the Akure convention after the NLC had pronounced it null and void? Mimiko should tell us his moral right or justification for insisting to host the LP national convention after he had decamped to PDP already. What was his intention for this act? He should also tell us the reason he imposed his main man, co-traveller in illegality, Barr Kayode Ajulo, as the national secretary. To hold forth for him, I guess? What a shame! Dr Mimiko should not pretend like all is well on his “return” to LP. Iroko should never dream of taking a front seat in LP again. Never!, in fact, not until he answers the integrity questions enumerated above. However, as we enjoin him to come out bold to react to all the issues raised here, Dr Mmiko will remain a persona non grata in today’s LP. Second, once Dr Mimiko honestly, without deceiving Nigerians as they (including his team members) have been doing, answers the integrity questions here, the congress (CPLPI) will hang their pen. Every sane Nigerian would expect Dr Mimiko to come with clean hands on these issues because equity is required.
We will continue to get to Dr Mimiko through social media because if they had bought all the conventional media (newspapers and their journalists), we are left only with this platform. When you sent this type of materials to the Nigerian newspapers, they will not publish it maybe because people like Iroko are the ones controlling the media. There are journalists in-house working for them. Those journalists are not representing the Nigerian masses interest(s), they represent those who shortchange Nigerians to pay them, all because of their pocket.
SIGNED:
Aremo Adeola Adepoju, Convener/Chairman, Congress of Promoters of Labour Party Ideals (CPLPI)
30 June, 2018