The Osun State chapters of the All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party have traded words over the aborted defection plan of Governor Ademola Adeleke.
The APC said Adeleke was rejected because he would be a liability and would hurt the integrity of the party.
But the PDP, which insisted it would not join issues with the opposition party, said Osun people would decide and defend their votes in 2026.
The spokesperson for Osun APC, Kola Olabisi, in a statement obtained in Osogbo on Wednesday, recalled that a caucus in the Osun PDP, in a communique signed by Adeleke and 27 other chieftains of the party, decried the resistance against the planned defection of the governor to the national ruling party.
“We state first of all that the highly informed Osun State public, who are aware that it was the fear of the impending 2026 election defeat that motivated the governor to desperately seek in our party an asylum for his political survival in 2026, are excited about the measured treatment meted to the Osun State governor and his desperate party men.
“Those who rejected the defection of Adeleke to the APC knew the intention was deceptive and was solely because of the troubled re-election bid of the governor, having regard that the same PDP is daily recruiting canvassers and opinion moulders to tarnish the image of President Tinubu on the radio and television in the state, while he is all over Abuja pretending to be friends of the President.
“You cannot be criticising, rubbishing and abusing the national leader of our party, President Bola Tinubu, at the corners of the state and at the same time be putting up a friendly posture, all in the interest of your desperate re-election bid which has hit the rock before the election proper,” Olabisi said.
