RE: WHY WE ACTED
• SEGUN SERIKI-LED MERCENARIES AT WORK
I read with dismay the piece credited to one Raphael Olaosebikan wherein he laboured to justify his treacherous acts and that of his ilk. The “write up” titled “Why we acted” has all the clear markings of the voice of Jacob but the hands of Esau. Hopefully many will understand this metaphor.

Let it be known from the outset that though the libellous and false article was ascribed to one of Segun Seriki’s minions, it was clearly the bombast of Segun Seriki and exhibited the wrongheaded logic that he is well-known for. The needless naked dance in the market square has shown that truly a guilty conscience needs no accuser. Otherwise, how does one situate the thoughtless blackmail, half-truths and outright lies that they churned out?

Expectedly, it was long in rhetorics but lacking in substance. Titled “Why We Acted” – a mimicry of Adewale Ademoyega’s “Why We Struck”, an account of the first military coup in Nigeria, the piece was a mere rehash of the jaundiced opinion of a self-confessed wheeler-dealer and conman who brainwashed Olaosebikan and his co-travellers into a voyage of self-immolation.

Away from all the empty boasts of pedigree and moral background, these reactionary elements, whose god is their belly, cannot justifiably lay claim to any ennobling ideological bent. They are only looking for what to eat. They are the kind of the kind of people that can be described as “anywhere belle face politicians”, a colloquial description of unscrupulous politicians. And like they described themselves, they are merely actors in the make-believe world of fiction. Unfortunately, this is not fiction. This is politics! This is life where the law of seed time and harvest time cannot be wished away.
Like the title of the jejune piece, they are mere actors who acted a script written, directed and funded by the Adebutus in their desperate bid to govern Ogun State and annexe it to their personal estate. But, just like it happened with the first military putsch in Nigeria, nemesis would catch up with these “actors” sooner than later. For, as Dele Giwa once said, “No evil deed can go unpunished. Any evil done by man to man will be redressed, if not now, then certainly later, if not by man, then certainly by God, for the victory of evil over good can only be temporary.”
No one has said that the Ogun State PDP belonged to our late leader, Senator Buruji Kashamu. But, the indubitable fact is that he has a formidable structure within the Ogun State PDP that cannot be wished away or bought over, no matter the dollars on offer! Anyone who tries to wish that away does so at his own peril and events will soon bear us out.
To be sure, that article is actually a grasp at straws by a drowning Segun Seriki, who is seeing his grand plan of a big sale of the Kashamu structure to the Adebutus evaporating before his eyes.

Everything Segun Seriki promised Ladi Adebutu and his father concerning the compromise and destruction of the Kashamu structure in Ogun PDP has failed till date.

Everyone noticed the agony on Segun Seriki’s face when the Ogun State PDP case to establish the authenticity of the Kashamu-sponsored Ogun PDP Exco came up in Abuja before Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu on the 14th of January, 2021.

Seriki had thought he was a strategist of the calibre of Senator Buruji Kashamu and (having used Adebutus’ money to buy over the erstwhile State Chairman, Samson Bamgbose) promised that the case, which continues to pose an existential threat to the gubernatorial ambition of Ladi Adebutu, would be discontinued and struck out.

To achieve this objective, a plan was hatched to debrief Barrister Ajibola Oluyede before that date and install Barrister Segun Odubela (SAN) as the new lawyer for the Plaintiffs. Odubela’s brief was to act for the Plaintiffs in the place of Mr. Oluyede and surprisingly ask the court to strike out the case under the guise of some false settlement. Of course, after stuffing their mouths and pockets with dollars.

Although Mr. Oluyede was not personally in court, his frightening spectre dominated that court session as his partner, Mrs Ifeoma Esom, worsted Odubela SAN and Chris Uche SAN, to completely demolish the Seriki plan. You should have seen Seriki and his co-travellers leaving the court that day with their heads bowed in defeat and disappointment.

Soon after that court hearing, Seriki was jettisoned by Ladi Adebutu as the go-between in the buying spree of anyone that was willing to sell out from the Kashamu structure.

Ladi started dealing directly with leaders like Chief R.A Adenaike (a.k.a Baba Ololu who has also messed himself up in his bid to do Ladi’s bidding in Ogun East) and others who would never follow Seriki because of his waspish nature.

It is this trend that has caused Segun Seriki to panic and to think that he can regain relevance by this characteristically mediocre outburst against Mr. Oluyede and the faithful, principled and dogged members of the Kashamu political family. He claims that he is still the leader of the mercenaries who are going “to the negotiation table” with Ladi Adebutu. Thus the pitiable self-eulogy at the conclusion of that “write up”.

Concerning the attempt to insult the widely respected Mr. Oluyede, I have no doubt that he (Mr Oluyede) can certainly fight for himself against the libel. However, knowing him as I do, I would not be surprised if he probably does not respond to the stupid outburst since he is a man of action and not of boasts like Segun Seriki. He won’t condescend to Seriki’s pitiable level. He would rather use the law to teach them judicial and political lessons. That’s his turf.

I am sure that in no distant future, it will become clear that Mr. Oluyede remains the most cerebral and effective lawyer that Ogun PDP has ever encountered. His track record and highly professional reputation cannot even be dented by the spurious rubbish being bandied around by a hustler.

However, I believe it is important to put the records straight in respect of the blatant falsehoods in that unfortunate “write up”.

First of all, it is only in Segun Seriki’s and his minions’ warped imagination that the advice given by Mr. Oluyede (when consulted about an invitation to the police on a Friday) can be considered a wrong advice. That advice was not only correct, the basis for it was well-articulated to those who sought Mr. Oluyede’s advice at the time. The Police were parties to a case in which the Court had given judgment that only the Kashamu-sponsored Exco (then led by Chief Adebayo Dayo) could conduct congresses to elect their successors. The Police were also parties to the new action (by the then Bamgbose-led successor to Dayo-led Exco) in which an order was subsisting that forbade any action against the new Exco.

So, it was clear that the Police could not claim validly that they did not know that the Sikirulai Ogundele-led gang, which Seriki, Bamgbose, Olaosebikan and others are now hobnobbing with, were the illegal contraption they should stop from taking over the Party secretariat.

Hindsight now reveals that the premonition that the plan was to arrest and detain the new Exco members on that Friday (to allow easy takeover of the secretariat from them while they were detained) was correct and Segun Seriki who was insisting that the Exco members go to the Police on that Friday was in on the plan. The plan also included an idea to use the detention of the members of the new Exco as a political trump to demoralise them and coerce them into signing documents in favour of Adebutu before regaining their freedom.

Seriki, as a double-agent, would then be posing as their saviour in all these and blaming the lawyer who allowed them to go see the Police on a Friday. That plan failed because of Mr. Oluyede’s advice. If one may ask: was it also Mr. Oluyede that advised the erstwhile woman leader, Mrs. Bimbo Lanre-Balogun, to depose to an affidavit that PDP congresses never held in Ogun State? This was the same woman who had earlier deposed to other affidavits that congresses were held and even spoke on camera to that effect.

Let it be stated that the invasion of the secretariat is also now a serious nail in the coffin of the Sikirulai Ogundele contraption and any congress or primaries they may conduct. Mr. Oluyede made it clear that it would play into our plan and so it has. Segun Seriki is incapable of seeing this because of his myopia but it will soon become evident, regardless of the number of people that they claim to have bought over.

Concerning meetings called by the PDP leaders for Mr. Oluyede’s advice, the records of those meetings are available and show that Mr. Oluyede’s role never exceeded that of an adviser. It was Seriki who has been fomenting trouble in a bid to control the new Exco and carry out his publicly declared intention of “making money like Buruji”.

His mediocre thinking did not allow him to understand that Kashamu had thriving businesses and stood for higher ideals than money and never lost sight of the public good in all he did politically. Seriki, on the other hand, is just a mercenary with negligible political capacity, as Ladi Adebutu has now begun to discover.

It was Segun Seriki that took Bamgbose to meet with Ladi Adebutu and his father at Sheraton Hotel in Lagos last year in his first step to sell the structure to Ladi Adebutu. That negotiation was inconclusive because it was pointed out to him there that his promises were flat because he was not perceived as having the clout to dictate to Mr. Oluyede to withdraw the court case that continues to threaten Ladi’s ambition, no matter how many people he buys.

After that meeting, I was with Mr. Oluyede when Segun Seriki called him and started begging him to attend a meeting with the Adebutus at their Iperu home. Mr. Oluyede flatly rejected the idea.

Subsequently, Seriki secured the support of Senator Kashamu’s younger cousin, Prince Yemi Ajibola to visit Mr. Oluyede in his office to persuade him to grant audience to Aare Oyefeso, who was an emissary from Chief Kessington Adebutu (a.k.a Baba Ijebu). After much pressure, Mr. Oluyede agreed to grant Aare Oyefeso audience and Prince Yemi and Segun Seriki were present at that meeting where Mr. Oluyede rejected the veiled purchase offer from Chief Adebutu’s emissary and insisted that there must be political rapprochement with the Kashamu group and not the outright purchase plan being mooted.

I am aware that the meeting was recorded by Mr. Oluyede and at no time was anything about money discussed. Segun Seriki is a liar and probably is the one who went behind to request for the money he mentioned in his “write up”.

While it is true that PDP needs to get its acts together and create a unified platform to win any election in Ogun State, let it be clear that Segun Seriki does not want that. He has made it clear publicly that he has no political ambition (that’s because he has no reputation anywhere anymore) and is only interested in money. He will do anything to achieve his selfish aim, including destroying the PDP in Ogun State.

It is hoped that the Adebutus would have seen through him. The empty boast that Segun Seriki is leading some losers to a “negotiation table” is of no moment. Segun Seriki can only lead them to the slaughterhouse where their own political careers (if any) can be destroyed. How a man who was expelled by the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the PDP in 2018 will lead them to the “negotiation table” remains to be seen! The expulsion is still subsisting as it has not been reversed. So, in effect, he is not a member of the Party. It is even more so now that he and his lackeys have sold their conscience for a meal ticket. Having been bought over with amounts ranging from $10,000 and above, what moral right do they have to “negotiate” for the good of all?

Ultimately, it is the real Kashamu group that will win as it always has. This is because of the God factor and the superior legal support from TRLPLAW as evidenced on the 14th of January 2021. Segun Seriki and his cohorts are going nowhere and cannot help the Adebutus in anyway. He is a loser and everyone should know it by now!
In vainly seeking to justify their treacherous acts, the pretenders quoted Chuba Okadigbo. That shows they are very good students of his school of politics but not of history. Need we say more?

God bless the soul of our departed leader, Senator Buruji Kashamu! God bless PDP!! God bless Ogun State!!!

• Sunkanmi Oyejide
State Publicity Secretary