Senator-elect of Ogun East Senatorial District, Buruji Kashamu, has expressed shock at what he described as an “unwarranted attacks” against his person by the national leader of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu.
Kashamu said Tinubu’s reaction to his innocuous congratulatory message to him is “unbecoming of someone of his stature and calibre,” stressing that he doubt if the statement was approved by Tinubu.
“However, if it was, I must state that I am taken aback by the unwarranted attacks against me as if we were still campaigning,” Kashamu, a Peoples Democratic Party leader in Ogun State said.
Tinubu had unleashed a missile against Kashamu on Tuesday for describing him as his role model, stressing that “Kashamu may be prodigal but he is no political son of Tinubu” according to a statement signed by Sunday Dare, Tinubu’s Media Adviser.
Tinubu’s statement stressed that Kashamu’s political lineage tracks to people like Bode George and President (Goodluck) Jonathan, adding that he “should direct his encomiums to these men who are his true role models. They need his contrived affections more than Tinubu does.”
Tinubu’s statement was a direct response to an earlier statement by Kashamu where he paid a rare tribute to the APC leader describing him as the architect of modern Nigeria and a man who made history by leading an opposition party to grab power at the centre.
“Truth be told, men like you are made of sterner stuff and are rare to come by in every generation. Little wonder you are called the Asiwaju and Jagaban of Borgu. I doff my hat.
“I hope that in spite of our membership of different political platforms, we would be able to collaborate for the upliftment of Yorubaland in particular and Nigeria as a whole,” Kashamu wrote in an open letter addressed to Tinubu.
Tinubu had urged Mr. Kashamu to “stop this cynical fawning,” adding that the days of false adulation and fake praise singing were gone in Nigerian politics and accused the Ogun State Senator-elect of “buying his victory” at the polls, and dared him to travel to the U.S. as a Nigerian Senator.
Kashamu faced drug related charges in the U.S. before he fled to the U.K. where repeated efforts by American officials to extradite him failed, before he returned to Nigeria.
The incoming law maker and 14 other were, in 1998, charged by a U.S. federal grand jury for their alleged involvement in an international conspiracy to smuggle heroin into the U.S.
On Tinubu’s accusation of buying his victory at the March 28th polls, Kashamu said that the appropriate forum to prove that is the election petitions tribunal and not the pages of newspapers.
“On the US case, I wish to state for the umpteenth time that the United States, as the bastion of democracy and the rule of law, would not lend itself to any form of abuse of the fundamental human rights of an innocent soul, especially one that has been arrested, tried, and freed by its most trusted ally – the United Kingdom.
“I am not running from any trial. All I have asked is for relevant parties to follow due process – if they believe that I yet have a case to answer.”
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