The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday told sacked Osun State local government chairmen and councillors to forget about returning to power. Instead, the ruling party in the state asked them to prepare for the next local government election to realise their dreams.
In a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Debo Ologunagba, the PDP told the All Progressives Congress (APC) to: “Accept Detained Ugandan opposition figure treated in clinic overnight Detained Ugandan opposition politician, Kizza Besigye, on hunger strike for a week, has been returned to prison after being in a clinic overnight, his allies have said.
The 68-year-old was rushed to a private medical facility in a prison ambulance as his his health was deteriorating, his lawyer Erias Lukwago wrote earlier on Facebook. Besigye was charged in a military court with illegal possession of a firearm, threatening national security, as well as treason, which carries the death sentence. He denies the accusations, reports the BBC.
The news about his health came hours after a cabinet minister said he had seen Besigye in jail. He urged him to resume eating and pledged to drop his military trial.
Another leading opposition politician, Bobi Wine, along with human rights activists, went to the prison yesterday to visit Besigye. the reality” and end “its resort to self-help, misrepresentations, vituperations, violence and killing with the aim to trigger a crisis and destabilise the state, having realised that it has irredeemably lost”.
It said the council bosses could not force their way back into office because a substantive judgment of the Appeal Court has since sealed their fate.
The statement said in part: “The PDP asserts that the fate of the ousted local government chairmen and councillors was sealed by the judgment of the Court to Appeal which nullified the unconstitutional attempt by the then Governor Gboyega Oyetola to illegally plant them as local government officers in the guise of an election.
“Having been roundly rejected by the people of Osun State in the Saturday, July 16, 2022, governorship election, then-Governor Oyetola and the APC ought to have known that attempting to side-step the laws and manipulate the process to illegally foist APC members and apologists as local government chairmen and counsellors was an exercise in futility which was bound to fail ultimately.”
The PDP added: “If the APC believes that it is truly popular in Osun State as it claims, it should rather get ready for election as already scheduled by the Osun State Independent Electoral Commission (OSSIEC) instead of holding unto an imaginary strand of straw and instigating violence and killings in the state.”
