The National Association of Seadogs (NAS), popularly known as the Pyrates Confraternity, has called on President Bola Tinubu to resist any temptation to influence the outcome of Saturday’s governorship election in Osun State in favour of his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).
In a statement titled “The Votes Must Count in Osun Governorship Election,” the group’s National Capoon (leader), Dr. Charles Meribole, urged the president to act as a true statesman and guarantee a level playing field for all governorship candidates in the poll.
The confraternity decried the wave of pre-election violence that has gripped Osun State, describing it as a threat to democracy. The statement referenced casualty figures documented by Amnesty International and highlighted concerns raised by civil society groups over the two leading parties, the Accord Party and the APC, condemning what it called a “descent to lawlessness” in the state.
“We call on President Bola Tinubu to act as a true Commander-in-Chief by ensuring a level playing field for all the governorship candidates in Saturday’s governorship election,” the group said. “He bears the greatest responsibility to ensure the protection of the electorate in Osun and dismantle every notion of the deployment of ‘Federal Might’ to suppress the will of the people.”
The Pyrates Confraternity also turned its attention to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), urging the body to use the Osun election as an opportunity to restore public confidence in its ability to conduct credible polls. The group stressed that INEC “cannot afford to fumble,” insisting that the commission must execute every stage of the process flawlessly from the logistical deployment of materials to the conduct and integrity of the exercise itself.
The intervention comes against the backdrop of a highly charged election season in Osun. Concerns over “federal might” have featured prominently in commentary ahead of the poll, following the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission’s brief freezing of the Osun State government’s account days before the election an order Tinubu later directed the agency to vacate as well as an earlier dispute over federal allocations to the state’s local governments.
The contest is largely seen as a three-way race between incumbent Governor Ademola Adeleke of the Accord Party, Bola Oyebamiji of the APC, and Najeem Salam of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), out of a field of 14 candidates. More than 2.3 million voters are registered to vote across the state’s 30 local government areas.
Violence has continued to mar the campaign period, with fresh unrest reported in Ijesaland hours before the vote, where suspected political thugs attacked APC members in Esa-Oke, killing one and leaving another hospitalised. President Tinubu has publicly assured Osun residents of adequate security during and after the polls and urged them to turn out in large numbers to vote.
