Tobi Adebayo
A former Governor of Ogun State, Aremo Olusegun Osoba has narrated how he shared millions of naira on the eve of the state’s 2003 governorship election.
Speaking during the book launch and the 60th birthday of his former Chief Press Secretary (CPS), Kayode Odunaro, Osoba said that he had shared a sum of N140m, despite knowing he would not have won the election.
He stated further that he had received an intelligence report that the election would be massively rigged and was advised against contesting because it had been “concluded.”
“The 2003 election, I put it behind me many years ago. 2003 is bygone whatever happened although in his (Odunaro) book he concluded that I refused to go to court, yes I did not, because the evidence was too much and he alluded to some of the evidence, but let’s forget about all that, it has gone, it is gone and the Ogun state people have had the chance to compare and contrast and they have given their conclusions and that is private to everybody.
“Nobody expected that the election would go the way it went, but I knew it will go the way it went because Prof. Adu of FUNAAB who was the returning officer had the figure already prepared.
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“Some of the security people had given me the figure of the result that they were going to announce and I knew, he was referring to me spending money and some people taking my money to sleep in hotels, pocketed the money. I knew because in politics you must learn to engage in wasteful spending and you must learn to buy all kinds of lies, that is all part of politics.
“I knew that the election was concluded; I was warned, the electoral officer from Cross River had told me after the Presidential election that, ‘Chief don’t contest the governorship, it is concluded’, but I said no.
“We shared N140million on the eve of the election and I knew it was a wasted money, but I shared it because if didn’t share it, they will say if I had not given them the money, they would have won,” Osoba said.
