Prior to the Saturday, March 18, 2023, state House of Assembly election, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Osun has threatened to occupy police stations around the state unless Inspector General of Police Usman Baba Alkali stops the ongoing detention of its leaders.
The party, which insisted that it is the state's ruling party and that all of its members are law-abiding citizens, ruled out returning to self-help, but it also said that if the harassment persisted, it would mobilize and storm all police posts in peaceful protests, resulting in the arrest of all of its members in the state.
This threat was included in a statement released on Sunday in Osogbo, the state capital, and signed by Akindele Adekunle, the interim chairman of the Osun PDP.According to the statement, "Our leaders are being detained in an effort to rig the election on Saturday. We will fight off any attempt to rig the results. The PDP earned a resounding victory in the recent elections in Osun. They are prepared to use their voting rights openly once more. Our democracy and our core human rights are under attack when our leaders are detained on kangaroo accusations.
"Self-help is not an option for us. We uphold the law and are the government in Osun State. But, if the intimidation of our members persists, we will organize a peaceful protest and storm every police station in Osun state. Let the IGP detain every PDP member in Osun.
"We demand that the Inspector General of Police cease advancing the malicious interests of theAPC. The head of the police department has a sacred duty to uphold the law impartially and not as a tool of one political party against another. It is inappropriate for APC leaders to give the IGP instructions on who to detain or arrest. This is not a military dictatorship, but a democracy.Akindele questioned whether winning an election in a free and fair election was sinful and why the IGP Baba Alkali was purposefully fanning political unrest in a quiet state like Osun.
The Osun PDP requested intervention from western embassies and international human rights organizations by ordering the IGP to behave, noting that the police's actions in Osun State were endangering the state's peace and security.
PDP participants are being forced against a wall. The constitution safeguards us as Nigerians. We won't give up our rights. We warned the IGP that any breakdown of peace and order in the state would be his responsibility. This statewide, illegal arrest must end.", the statement said.
Before the general elections in 2023, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Osun PDP were at each other's throats.A few weeks before the presidential and National Assembly elections, there were recorded incidences of killings committed along the Ife-Ijesa axis of the state, which brought everything to a climax.
Ajibola Famurewa, the APC candidate for the Osun East Senatorial District, was taken into custody but later freed.
Later, the Osun PDP went on to win all three senate seats and nine federal House of Representatives seats with a 100% margin of victory.
Calls to Yemisi Opalola, the police public relations officer (PPRO) of the Osun State Police Command, went unanswered.
Opalola, however, had consistently argued in past reports that the state's Police Command was impartial because it did not endorse any political parties or candidates.
Moreover, the state's police commissioner,Before to the state's election process, Patrick Kehinde Longe met with political parties and candidates for elective seats.
The head of the Osun Police reiterated the force's impartiality throughout the talks and issued a warning that, as the security organization in charge of overseeing election security, it would not tolerate any form of violence from the political figures and their organizations.
The whole force of the law would be applied to anyone apprehended, he further threatened.
