Team Arapaja, a political support group loyal to the former Deputy Governor of Oyo State, Ambassador Taofeek Arapaja has strongly rejected claims by the GSM Advocates that the late Ibadan political leader, Alhaji Lamidi Adedibu, placed a curse on Ambassador Taofeek Oladejo Arapaja.
In a statement responding to the GSM Advocates, Team Arapaja described allegations that a curse was behind Arapaja’s political party moves as baseless falsehoods manufactured out of bitterness.
The group asserted that the attacks stem from frustration over Arapaja’s refusal to join the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) alongside Governor Seyi Makinde’s faction.
According to the statement signed by Ibrahim Sheriff on behalf of the group, “It is baffling that they manufactured lies to denigrate Ambassador Arapaja simply because they are still in pain that he refused to join them in APM. Why is Arapaja their sole target? Since his departure, no fewer than 13 key individuals have resigned from Governor Makinde’s camp, including his Chief of Staff, Otunba Segun Ogunwuyi. Why are they not attacking others as well?” The statement queried.
Addressing the claim of a mentor’s curse, Team Arapaja clarified that the relationship between the late Adedibu and Arapaja remained warm and respectful until Adedibu’s passing in 2008. The group added that Arapaja maintains a cordial relationship with the Adedibu family to this day, a fact that can be independently verified.
Flipping the narrative on the curse allegations, Team Arapaja suggested that if anyone is acting under the weight of a maternal curse, it is Governor Seyi Makinde himself.
“If anybody is accursed, it is their principal, Engr. Seyi Makinde. “His erratic political behaviour and disregard for elders, traditional rulers, and loyalists stem from the curse his late mother may have placed on him when he failed to pick her calls at the point of her death—a tragic fact Makinde himself publicly admitted to during her burial.”
Team Arapaja stated that this underlying pattern explains Makinde’s governance style, including the strangulation of local governments where decay in infrastructure, poor health care facility, lack of quality education, poor road network among others have become the centre of his administration and his frequent attacks on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration, which had previously assisted him.
Turning to political stability, Team Arapaja argued that Governor Makinde’s own record reveals true party-hopping.
“Makinde was with the late Alhaji Adedibu, but when he failed to secure the PDP senatorial ticket in 2007, he defected to the ANPP. He later decamped to the PDP, then to the SDP, and back to the PDP before securing the governorship ticket in 2019.
Upon gaining power, Governor Makinde sidelined the loyal party elders who supported him, left the PDP in shambles, and moved to his latest platform, the APM, where he is now attempting to hijack the party structure from its original owners to pursue his already failed presidential ambition.”
Dismissing claims that Arapaja lacks grassroots support, the group stated that his political influence spans all 33 local government areas in Oyo State. They cited the recent wave of his supporters joining the All Progressives Congress (APC) across Ibadan South-East, Ibadan South-West, Oluyole, Egbeda, Lagelu, Iwajowa, Oyo East, Oyo West, Afijio, and Atiba local governments and others as concrete proof of his ongoing political relevance.
