Oyinlola, a kindergarten politician – Tukur; you’re senile, oyinlola replies tukur...

The crisis rocking the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, yesterday took another dimension as the National Chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, and a factional National Secretary, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, engaged in a verbal war. While Tukur described Oyinlola as a kindergarten politician, unrepentant dictator of the first-order and the main cause of the crisis in PDP, Oyinlola said that Tukur was senile.
This is coming a few hours after President Goodluck Jonathan, the aggrieved governors and party stakeholders met on Tuesday at the Presidential Villa on a reconciliation meeting.
Also, the party Board of Trustees, BoT, Chairman, Chief Tony Anenih, recently cautioned both factions against using provocative statements.
Tukur, in a statement by his Special Assistant on Media, Prince Oliver Okpala, said Oyinlola was smuggled into the party as the national secretary, bereft of the basic competence, experience and the pedigree to hold such a sensitive position in a big political organisation like the PDP.
He added that Oyinlola lacked credible credentials to sermonise on democracy and due process, including rule of law.
Tukur, who was reacting to the interview granted by Oyinlola, labelled the factional secretary as a dictator and main cause of the crisis in PDP.
“Without equivocation, this statement is both laughable and ridiculous. The world knows the antecedent of Chief Oyinlola as a military dictator and administrator whose style of politics is at variance with the current political dispensation in the country.
“It is a fact that Oyinlola was one of those military bunch who held down our democracy for a long time. As a former military man, Chief Oyinlola is an unrepentant dictator of the first order. “Under normal circumstances, he should not be heard to resort to platitudes or righteous pontifications on the ideals of democracy and the rule of law. This is because by training and orientation, he is a slave to order and command of the military.
“He lacks any credible credentials to sermonise on democracy and due process, including the rule of law. Oyinlola might have been a good military tactician but (he is) a kindergarten politician who requires total political re-adjustment and the removal of his military toga to face the realities of the moment. Oyinlola’s antecedents are well-known; he has been a military dictator.
“He should retrace his steps, return to the path of political rectitude, remove his military toga and dictatorial tendencies, study the manifesto and constitution of any party he chooses to join in order to have a place in our current political dispensation.”
In his reaction, Oyinlola said: “Why we don’t want to join issues with Baba Tukur out of respect for old age, one can excuse him on his account of senility. Tukur has gone senile.
“The fact that I trained as a military officer has never negatively affected my administrative capabilities and abilities. I remain a gentleman in all my services as a public officer and a politician.
“Tukur should attempt to do an opinion survey at the headquarters of his PDP and I assure him that his findings would make him abdicate his position without further delay based on the fact that he lacks the support of even members of staff who regard his autocratic style as responsible for the crisis in the PDP.
“That I’m a stickler for due process is a plus for me and Tukur should find out if I ever circumvented rules and regulations or acted in an improper manner that he (Tukur) always does in company with his co-travellers.
“Everybody knows that Tukur’s tenure so far has been the worst in the 14 years history of the party and nobody should be surprised that Tukur, who came in with preconceived personal agenda of caging and antagonising state governors and other interest groups in the PDP, has been a monumental failure and he is the root of all the crises within the PDP today.
“I ask that the leadership of PDP should subject our tenure to a management audit to be able to determine who serially violated the PDP constitution through reckless administrative actions and who attempted to sanitise the whole administrative procedure at the national headquarters.”
Oyinlola, however, added that it was on record at the headquarters of the PDP that the period he served as national secretary saw remarkable changes in the administration of the PDP