By Gbenga Sodeinde
The attention of Michael Opeyemi Bamidele Campaign Organization has been drawn to a video being mischievously circulated to blackmail Senator Bamidele from going to Court to fight the injustice that characterized the kangaroo gubernatorial primaries of the All Progressives Congress in Ekiti State.
Without mincing words, we reiterate that Senator Bamidele and the other six APC governorship aspirants will never back down in their resolve to fight the injustice that conditioned the charade primary election of 27th January, 2022 in Ekiti State.
The video in question was taken at a Stakeholders Meeting in 2020 where Bamidele was appealing to party stakeholders to withdraw their cases from Court in the spirit of reconciliation and unity and that was because the 2018 APC guber primaries was a free and fair exercise of which Senator Bamidele was an Aspirant.
We make bold to say that Senator Bamidele is a foremost human rights lawyer, a fearless pro-democracy advocate and dogged freedom fighter who will never support injustice and neither will he take any injustice from anybody. To this extent, no amount of misguided blackmails directed against Bamidele can change his resolve to approach the independent court of Justice in redressing the gross illegalities and malpractices that characterized the party primaries as conducted by Governor Abubakar Badaru of Jigawa State.
We strongly detest the circulation of the video portraying Senator Bamidele as if he outrightly stands against anybody going to Court against the party even in the face of tyranny, injustice and oppression as demonstrated by the Fayemi administration on 27th January, 2022 during the kangaroo primaries.
It is quite glaring at this juncture that the circulation of the stale video shows that the Fayemi administration is already jittery about the possible outcome of going to Court by the seven aspirants challenging the Executive lawlessness, political rascality, naked display of crudity and sheer abuse of power during the kangaroo election.
Bamidele is not denying the ownership of the video being credited to him but it was a completely different scenario and circumstances that informed the speech he made at the Stakeholders Meeting.
The meeting was an aftermath of the 2018 guber primaries in Ekiti State and it was aimed at pacifying party members who felt slighted by the emergence of Dr. Kayode Fayemi as the APC governorship candidate for the July 2018 Governorship election in the State.
It is on record that no single Aspirant among the thirty-three aspirants who contested condemned the 2018 primaries as unfair and non-free. There was no irregularity or high handedness with regard to the process. It was entirely incomparable to the 27th January, 2022, which was a daylight robbery of the people’s mandate and a reckless subversion of democratic ethos and the rule of law.
Against this backdrop, we enjoin all lovers of justice, democracy and freedom to ignore the stale video as it is not relevant to the current issues at stake. It is an indication that Governor Fayemi and his anointed Aspirant, Biodun Oyebanji and their cohorts are jittery of the outcome of any litigation challenging the charade they perpetrated in Ekiti State and have continued to run helter skelter seeking for ways to discourage Bamidele and other aspirants from going to Court. We wish to State here that such diabolical and arm-twisting strategy is dead on arrival.
