The Publisher of SaharaReporters and Presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC) in the 2023 election, Omoyele Sowore, has described as lies all that had been said by the wife and children of late Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu.
Earlier reported that Akeredolu passed away on Wednesday, December 27, 2023, after a prolonged battle with leukaemia and prostate cancer.
However, the reports surrounding Akeredolu’s death have since generated mixed reactions among politicians, and concerned Nigerians.
Sowore, a human rights activist argued that the body language of Akeredolu’s wife and son indicated that they were not honest about the information they disclosed to the public regarding the late governor’s time and location of death.
He further stated that the assertion of the late governor passing away in Germany is false, and it would be perceived as a scheme orchestrated by the governor’s relatives to embezzle public funds.
He said, “This substantive governor visited the home of the late Governor Akeredolu on Thursday. You see the demeanour of the wife and the contempt in the way he was looking at this governor who had just come to visit, you know that it was all manipulative, and she’s acting all sad now.
“Some two days ago, the wife of the governor was in Ondo State, insulting everybody that they are bush people. A week ago, she met with some members of the House of Assembly. And now we’re finding out tonight that Akeredolu didn’t die in Germany.
“So they are all lying to the public that he died in Germany. Maybe they wanted to use that to take some more money out of the state. I don’t get it. Everything is a lie.
“Now we might have to demand to see Akeredolu’s body physically to be sure that he hadn’t died a long time ago and was buried before they came up to announce it.
“Because basically what these people did, the wife, his son and the political cabal in Ondo State, was just using his vulnerable condition to take out their greed on the state, 5 million people. They’re just taking out money, forging signatures.”
Also, according to Sowore, the atrocities committed by the late governor’s wife and son are enough to make them face prosecution if Nigeria were to be “functioning”.
He continued: “That’s why I said that if this was a saner society, these people would be investigated and properly investigated, indicted for the criminal acts they perpetrated using a vulnerable man.
“This should not have happened to Akeredolu at all, and that they could do this to their family, you can understand why they are so mean to us, the people of Ondo State. And you know, people will say, well this is not the time to say it, but we had to say this during (Umaru) Yar’Adua’s time, unfortunately, we didn’t learn from it.
That’s why it just happened. Had the law been properly done at that time, after the Yar’Adua saga, we would not have had to go through this.
“And this is a shame. It’s a shame that now we are finding out tonight that he died in his house. As of yesterday, they said he died in Lagos. I saw a statement issued by their family today signed by one Akeredolu junior saying that he died in Germany.
“They even passed on information yesterday to the media that he died somewhere near Hanover in Germany.
So they were still manipulating as we speak, but I knew as of yesterday that something was fishy about it because when President Tinubu issued his statement, he never mentioned where he died. Lagos State, they never mentioned it.
It’s unusual that they all did not want to talk about where he died. I have a feeling, and I might be wrong, that this man probably died a long time ago before now and they just kept him wrapped up somewhere in the cooler.”
