The chairman of the Bisi Ilaka Campaign Organization, Alhaji Bola Akinyemi, has stated that the travails of his principal, Chief Oyebisi Lukman Ilaka are “quite political”.
He spoke during a chat with reporters.
Ilaka, who is the Ladilu of Oyo, was arrested following a shooting at the palace of the Alaafin of Oyo, during the recently held Oranyan Festival. One of his body guards fired, killing two and wounding one.
According to Adeyemi, Chief Ilaka was attending a meeting at the state headquarters of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, “when a call came from one of the chiefs in Oyo that his attention was needed in the palace to come and play his role in the Oranyan Festival that was ongoing. He reluctantly had to leave because of his love for Oyo people.
“Ordinarily, he was not supposed to go because he had other pressing matters to attend to. At a point in time, a senior chief said he must come, and he went. When he got to Oyo, he didn’t enter the house. He just said people should get ready and they went to the palace and they took off from his house in Oyo”.
Adeyemi also pointed out that “in 2011, his house was attacked in Oyo and that was when he got the license for a gun, just for self-protection. Since then, I have never seen him with the gun. In fact he doesn’t go out with two cars. So he doesn’t go about with boys. If you see him with two cars, my car must be the second car. So he is not the type of person that goes about with crowd. He doesn’t like it. So, that day, he left. He didn’t even know that his bodyguard who was taking care of the house had kept the gun in the car”.
An online medium- AnchorOnline quoted the campaign DG disclosed that Ilaka did not spend more than 30 minutes at the palace because he did not meet the other High Chiefs there. “He decided to leave to continue with his political activities. If he had gone there for campaign, I would have been there because I am the Director General of the campaign organization, so he didn’t go there for campaign”, he said.
Explaining what happened when the shooting took place, he said “people normally mill around Ilaka. As they were milling around him, he was trying to dish out the little he could dish out. He didn’t even hear, it was somebody beside him that said ‘oga, you are still counting money, there is a gunshot outside. I was told that when pandemonium broke out after the shot, he was even trying to assist one of the injured, one of who incidentally and tragically was hiding Chief Ilaka’s purse. Within the twinkle of an eye, politics was introduced into it. It was as if a trap had been set and somebody just fell into it.
The person who shot was caught; right the person was his bodyguard. The person even told the police that his principal did not even know he was carrying the gun. He said it was another person that asked him to go and carry the gun. So it could have been a planned thing. He didn’t even know he was in any trouble”.
Stating that it was Chief Ilaka that reported the matter to the police, Akinyemi said “he went there as a gentleman to go and report at the police station and before you knew it, within the twinkle of an eye, a political dimension had been introduced to it. And this is Bisi Ilaka that had been asked to come and join the APC severally in 2014 before the presidential election, he refused and recently he has also refused, very recently when Senator Ladoja left for ADC. I don’t think opposition should be like this”.
Asked if he feels the travails of his principal are politically motivated, the Director General said “it is, if it were not to be, there was accidental discharge, the person who fired the shot had been caught and there is no link between Bisi Ilaka and the person who shot other than that he is an employee of his”.
He also took time to explain that people would naturally mill around politicians but that intentions of a mob may be very difficult to read. “The development must have prompted the bodyguard to take that action. It was not deliberate. It was not premeditated. So when you talk of theory of conspiracy, where did we conspire? Where did we meet?” Akinyemi asked.
Stating that the event will not make Chief Ilaka change his mind on contesting the Oyo Central senatorial position, he said “the police know they cannot keep him perpetually so they went to a Magistrate Court, knowing fully well that a Magistrate Court does not have the jurisdiction. They took him to the magistrate court just to keep him away for a while. Maybe they feel they can cow him into rescinding his decision to remain in the PDP. He remains an aspirant; in fact, he is virtually a candidate in the PDP because as we speak, nobody has obtained form to contest with him. That is what they want to achieve, to remove him from the way to secure the way for others”.
Continuing, he said “I am not saying APC is behind it but I know this is quite political. You see when you have matters in court you have to be very careful. This is clearly political. Do you know the funny part of it? We heard while we were at Iyaganku that some people wanted to stage a protest in Oyo that why is Ilaka being kept in Ibadan when he was not responsible for the shooting. Two, if he had gone to Oyo, they knew there would have been a backlash so they were reporting to the people in Oyo that Chief Ilaka had been released. In fact families of the deceased have even come to say they are with Ilaka. And even the one in the hospital we have been responsible for the treatment”.
When asked whether Chief Ilaka would leave the contest in order to save his name, Akinyemi’s response was “did Nelson Mandela leave politics because of persecution? He spent 27 years in jail. This is our own Nelson Mandela treatment. No retreat, no surrender. We are not going back. Aluta continua, Victoria ascerta. The message I have for supporters is that they should keep the light aglow, we are still on course. They cannot cow us. Ilaka campaign is still very much on stream”.
But why is Chief Ilaka still in the race, having tried a couple of time? His DG simply said “Abraham Lincoln contested several times, about eight times before he won. Muhammadu Buhari, here in Nigeria contested four times before he won.
