Osun State Commissioner for Finance, Dr Wale Bolorunduro, was on Friday evening reportedly arrested by men of the Delta State police command in Warri, Delta State alongside some security escorts but was released on Saturday morning. But Dr Bolorunduro told Sunday Tribune that the report was false, noting that he was not in Delta State but in Lagos with his family.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), reacting to the report, called for a thorough investigation into the matter, alleging that the Osun State government had been making threats ahead of the 9 August, 2014 governorship election in the state, that it would cause mayhem.
Speaking with Sunday Tribune, Mr Ojo Williams, Osun PDP legal adviser, urged the police to investigate the matter thoroughly, alleging that the All Progressives Congress (APC) government in the state had been recruiting all manner of thugs from all parts of the country for the August election and that the commissioner’s arrest with armed escorts vindicated their allegation.
Though details of the arrest are yet to be made public, police sources revealed that the commissioner’s arrest was not unconnected with the six mobile escorts he reportedly engaged in Delta and who were also said to have caused commotion at a hotel in Ugheli.
Police sources said though the commissioner claimed he was in Ughelli to attend a ceremony, he was queried over how he came about the escorts who came in a bank’s security van with upturned registration number BDG 618 AA. The police are also said to be investigating the culpability of the mobile men who, they alleged, might have left their duty posts.
The commissioner countered the claims while speaking with Sunday Tribune, saying: “Ask them to produce their report; at least if they arrested anyone, there should be a report. On Thursday, I wanted to go to Delta State but I could not because I was with the governor on the programme, Gbangba D’ekun. I went to Lagos on Friday morning, thinking I would catch a flight to Delta but I didn’t get any. So I stayed back in Lagos with my wife and family. You can send a reporter to me in Magodo, I am there presently as we speak.”
“I don’t know where they got that story from and it is not fair bringing my former employer into that kind of dirty politics,” he said.
The commissioner was said to have lodged at the hotel in Ughelli with the said escorts, where they reportedly fired gunshots into the air and teargas at the hotel lodgers as well as residents in the area, which attracted the attention of men of the state Dragon Patrol unit.
According to police sources, who claimed they were yet to conclude investigation into the matter, the Osun commissioner admitted that the security escorts were with him after two of the escorts were arrested, while the others fled.
The situation reportedly degenerated when they refused the entreaties of the men of the police command who were drafted in to restore peace. The escorts and the commissioner, it was said, took off in their vehicles with the men of the police command in hot pursuit.
“The escorts started firing at the policemen when they were asked to stop,” a source said, adding that “you can imagine it. But our men were able to overpower them. They arrested them in Warri. It was when they were being interrogated that we realised that a state commissioner was involved,” explained one of the sources.
The commissioner and the escorts, according to sources, who were transferred to Asaba in the early hour of Saturday, were released on the orders of the state Commissioner of Police, Mr Ikechukwu Aduba, while the police public relations officer, DSP Celestina Kalu, insisted that investigation into the matter was in progress.
Mr Williams advised the Federal Government to take keen interest in Osun State over the continued threat of violence being made by APC and Governor Rauf Aregbesola.
“Governor Aregbesola has vowed to cause mayhem in Osun and he has been saying it everywhere he goes. We know that the APC government has been recruiting thugs, arming and training them in some locations in the state. The Federal Government must not take the threat lightly.
“What we have in Osun at present is worse than Boko Haram,” Williams alleged.
Source: Tribune
