By Adeshina Akinpelu
It has been two years that Gani Adams deliberately dismounted from the great height of fame to that of infamy. For selfish reasons, he abandoned
a well-laid table of greatness to dine in the sewers.
Gani Adams’s journey to infamy began in 2015 when the National Coordinating Council of Oodua Peoples Congress, OPC, passed a vote of no confidence on him for no other crime other than trading rights of Yoruba sons and daughters on the altar of politics by organising anti-Jega rally.
ANTI-JEGA RALLY BY GANI ADAMS
On March 17, 2015, Oodua Peoples Congress, OPC at the behest of Gani Adams and against the approval of the National Coordinating Council of the group organised a protest in Lagos in which he called for the removal of Professor Attahiru Jega as the chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of Nigeria.
Like it is often said that, ‘there is no smoke without fire’, Gani Adams action was based on the fact that he took money from former President Goodluck Jonathan who as at that time was desperate to win the 2015 presidential election. While speaking with journalists on the motive behind the rally, Gani Adams was again economical with truth.
He never admitted to receiving any money from Jonathan but only admitted that OPC had been awarded a “Pipeline Protection” contract that would see him employ 15,000 Yoruba youths.
For those of us in the know and who have evidence that Gani Adams took money for the protest; we immediately issued a statement disassociating ourselves from the anti-Jega rally. We believe that OPC as a Yoruba pressure group should be non-partisan.
OUR STAND ON ANTI-JEGA RALLY BY GANI ADAMS THEN
We, the members of the National Coordinating Council of the Oodua People’s Congress, OPC, the highest ruling body of the organization, wish to disassociate ourselves from the shameful, destructive, violent and reactionary activities of the Gani Adam-led team which occurred in Lagos today. What was witnessed today in Lagos was the highest level of political violence sponsored and funded by certain elements in the Jonathan government.
Gani Adams is on his own and does not enjoy the support of a large size of our membership spread across the country. He is working for the sponsors of violence against our people who want the March 28 elections not to hold. Unleashing terror on innocent citizens and killing them is not the way of democracy. It is not our idea of a people-oriented advocacy.
Gani Adams is on dubious project. He is using the Pipleline contract from the Jonathan government as a ploy or excuse to recruit people to work for Jonathan and PDP in the South West. Gani Adams is acting against Yoruba interest. The compromises he has made amounts to selling the Yoruba to the present government for a piece of Pipeline contract to line his pockets. OPC is not about Pipleline contracts or any other contracts for that matter. The Yoruba interest is beyond contracts. We seek justice and fairness from the current government.
We, members of the National Coordinating Council of the Odua People’s Congress, OPC, call all true Yoruba leaders, sons and daughters to stand with us in totally condemning Gani and his anti-democratic tendencies. We must renounce him and remind him he cannot sell the Yoruba race to Jonathan and PDP on the cheap. He also has no authority to speak on behalf of the Yoruba people. We pity those who rely on him to win votes. They will be sorely disappointed. Their investment is a bad one already. We reject today and always any attempt to use our organization and its members for narrow and selfish partisan purposes.
We must remind them that the Yoruba people cannot be hoodwinked by sweeteners. No one will expect the larger Yoruba people to follow an individual who is a Lilliputian in the political development and history of the Yoruba nation. The Yorubas are politically sophisticated people and will simply ignore political opportunist like Gani Adams. We renounce him and his activities which are against the larger Yoruba interest. We renounce all other Yoruba sons and daughters who are playing roles inimical to the welfare and interest the larger Yoruba nation.
We call on our people to be vigilant politically at this time. Nigeria needs a new leadership, a new direction and a country that works.
BEFORE AND AFTER 2015 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
Prior to that 2015 presidential election, Gani Adams also promised to deliver six million Southwest votes for former President Goodluck Jonathan; a promise which never came to pass as it only became Jonathan’s albatross in the Southwest.
“OPC is a group of six million people. We sat down at our National Coordinating Council to decide on who to vote for between President Jonathan and Buhari and the support for Jonathan is unanimous.
“Now, we have come out to support Jonathan because of the National Conference. We have been clamouring for National Conference since 1992, even our leaders could not organise it. President Olusegun Obasanjo organised the National Political Reforms Conference with a lot of no-go areas. In the end there was a stalemate. “Now a minority, Jonathan, did it. The only no-go area is the unity of the country. He gave us open cheque to decide the future of Nigeria.”
Adams had on many occasions publicly justified his political bias for the PDP and Jonathan. He got contracts to print PDP posters for the whole of the South-West, organized pro-PDP rallies, arrange Yoruba musicians for PDP rallies as well as sponsoring one musician by the name of King to do a dirty album to discredit and insult President Buhari and governor Ambode of Lagos State among others. Who now is the politician between us and the con artist called Adams?
The truth which is glaringly evident is that, Gani Adams has done far worse than his predecessor. He is not just romancing with politics, but has fully plunged into it head over heels.
GANI ADAMS’ MANY CRIMES
It is on record that the only crime Dr. Fredrick Faseun committed before we passed a vote of no confidence on him was that he took money which he did not disclose to executive members of OPC. That was why we replaced him with Gani Adams.
Unfortunately, over three thousand members lost their lives in the supremacy battle that followed the removal of Faseun and subsequent division of OPC into two. Today, Gani Adams committed more crimes that what Faseun did before we removed him. Gani Adams has attempted to assassinate so many of us who have passed a vote of no confidence on several occasions.
Particularly, he has shown great disdain to Comrade Adeshina Akinpelu whom he has directed him team of assassins to eliminate on several occasions. His recent incitement of members against Akinpelu was when he showed up in Ibadan to celebrate a ‘kangaroo Oke-Badan festival.
While Gani Adams has been the only one benefitting from the largess of politics; he has not brought any commensurate gain to the organization. Unfortunately for those myopic people who are following him today; he is the only one acquiring properties and many luxury cars while the average member remains pauperized.
Adams has refused to respond to the allegations of misappropriation of OPC funds among other sundry allegations we levelled against him. Rather than the empty boasts and campaigns of calumny he is waging against us in the press, Adams should do the needful and either come clean with the OPC and the public or otherwise retire to Arigidi-Akoko which he claims as his father’s village, but which we doubt, because the surname he uses itself, is from his mother’s side.
One Oguntimehin who turned into Adams spokesman overnight even claimed in one his releases that ‘five organizations with “noble responsibilities” have been birthed’ from the OPC.
The first, the Oodua Progressive Union (OPU) is nothing more than a means through which Adams intends to swindle people in the Diaspora much like he has done within the country. The question is, how many meetings have the leaders of the OPC at home had with leaders and cadre of the affiliated OPU since Adams came up with this idea which is nothing more than a con venture?
Secondly, and as stated earlier, Gani Adams does not realize that there is a difference between his person and the OPC as a group. This much has been exposed by the dim-witted response of his spokes-person in listing Gani Adams Foundation (GAF) as a part of the OPC. Millions of OPC funds have in the past been squandered on Adams birthdays and philandering activities without any returns or benefits to the organization. For avoidance of any doubt, Gani Adams Foundation and his wife’s Oasis Women Organization are distinct entities from the OPC and numbskulls like Oguntimehin should realize this.
On the matter of the Oodua Economic Empowerment Initiative, we make bold to say it is another diabolical scheme by Adams to swindle OPC members and deceive them into accepting his sinister plans to join the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) national cake squandering train. When introducing the scheme, members where told to open bank accounts as well as presenting two identity cards issued by the organization.
Since that was done almost a year ago, nothing has come of it, as no member has had his/her account credited with any money despite all of Adams claims. We stand to be corrected on this issue.
The Oodua Research Centre mentioned by Adams mouth-piece exists only as a figment of the imaginations of Oguntimehin and his boss. If this is not the case, let both men tell the whole world when it was created, what activities have been undertaken by the body and where such took place since it was created.
As for the landed property at 13 Olusoga Street, Mushin, Lagos which Adams alleged he personally donated to the OPC in 2004, nothing could be farther from the truth than this bare-faced lie. The land has been the venue of our weekly meeting since the late 1990s. It is the scene of many skirmishes with law enforcement agents. Because of its intrinsic value to the OPC and its early history, a decision was made to acquire the land for the organization. This was done with the aid of one Pa. Augusto of Lawanson area, Lagos for the princely sum of four million naira which was contributed by members of the OPC. This was augmented with funds from the money from a job the OPC executed at Oke-Alo area, Anthony Village, Lagos as against the claims of Oguntimehin and his boss. There are many living witnesses to that transaction and we challenge Gani Adams to prove otherwise.
OUR DEMAND
Our demand of Gani Adams is simple; stop bastardising our collective heritage and leave the OPC for genuinely committed members. Whatever grouse or axe he has to grind with anybody, Adams should find a way of settling his personal scores personally, rather than foisting it on the group as a whole.
We equally demand that Gani Adams come out to defend his academic certificates which we know he obtained through fraudulent means.
CONCLUSION
Rather than admit the fact that he has failed Yoruba sons and daughters as a leader; Gani Adams has failed to acknowledge the ethical dimension of his problems. Even with a heavily deflated house; he still deceives himself like Narcissus who fell in love with his own image reflected from a pool of water.
It has been two years that Gani Adams began his infamous journey to infamy. And today, he has reached his destination where no attempt by anybody will ever succeed in washing him clean of his self-inflicted smears.