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lanreb1@juno.com Offin, Sagamu, Ogun State, Nigeria

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OPEN LETTER FROM LANRE BANJO
TO OTUNBA GBENGA DANIEL

Otunba Gbenga Daniel
Oke Igbehin
Abeokuta, Ogun State

Dear Otunba Daniel:

here has been a resistible urge for me to write yet another letter to you during your inglorious tenure in Ogun State. Since the drum is kept beaten louder and louder, I have to succumb to the inner urge to expose your diabolical plan to the world and warn you not to attract incurable and unappeasable curse on your children, wife, the entire members of your family including your unborn kinfolks.

It is not hidden that I have been opposing your misgovernance, serious looting, deceit, and the cajoling of already blind folded and confused masses. It is on record that my condemnation of the charade local government elections conducted under your watch in March of 2004 led me to take a two-page advertisement in the Daily Independent after you used your monetary power and worldly connection, which would expire soon to prevent the publishing of the letter in the Nigerian Tribune.

After the distribution of my audio campaign material began in March of this year, you held a series of meetings in your newly built mansion in Sagamu with the presence of Alhaja Mujidat a.k.a Iron Lady. The first meeting was held on Sunday, March 19, 2006 with your party faithful. This meeting was followed with another one held on Sunday, March 26, 2006 with the youth. In both cases, you left your Church to plan evil against a creature of God, a creation sent on a mission to save humanity from deception, hoodwinking, and destructive oppression. At the first meeting, you said "how could Lanre Banjo be allowed to distribute this material in Sagamu without a response?" The cult members whom you have set up to threaten opponents, delivering message of death on your behalf then promised to take care of business.

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On Monday, March 27, 2006, at exactly 12.10pm, four men came to my house and demanded to see me. When they were told that I have traveled, they warned the head of my Security that I am not safe and ran away. On Tuesday, March 28, 2006, Chief Bayode Oluwole's residence was attacked in Sagamu in broad daylight, with about seven (7) vehicles vandalized, and some people severely injured. As at the time of writing this letter to you those arrested in the heinous act were yet to be prosecuted.

Today, Monday, June 26, 2006, it was reported to me that two men who bragged to be members of your killing squad- the cult members you are breeding in Ogun State-carelessly boasted in a beer parlor that they heard that I would soon be in the country, and they must begin to plan to carry out the behest of OGD {Otunba Gbenga Daniel} to kill me with confidence that your government would exculpate them. Well, I am informing the man behind the plot to assassinate me that I am now in the country. Bring it on!

Due to the fact that your records from the time you have entered politics speaks for themselves, one cannot take this information with the waive of hand. First, Dele Arojo a co-contestant on the platform of your political party, (PDP) was gunned down in Lagos thus clearing the way for you to emerge as the flag bearer of the PDP in Ogun State. Second, was your violent attack on the entourage of Senator Ibikunle Amosun in Abeokuta. This was followed by the shameless act of assembling thugs and cults with machetes and guns in a rally for your support. That day, you fired a shot to send a signal that no one should mistake your dark cool face for a man of peace. Third, was the organized disappearance and assassination of Mr. Sule Animashaun, alias Age in Sagamu, which was alleged to have been perpetrated by your hit squad. Fourth, was the abortive attempt to assassinate Alhaja Yetunde Oyemara and Chief Bayode Oluwole both in Sagamu. It is on record that those who attacked Chief Bayode Oluwole's residence in daylight left the Sagamu Local Government office wearing OGD Strike Force uniforms and in a bus without plate numbers. I cannot also forget Kola Tonight, an opposition member, who was macheted in Sagamu and had to take refuge in another city. Perhaps you were made Arole in Sagamu based on these records of violence against the indigenes of the town that opposed your misrule. As a descendant of a fisherman who settled in Ijebu-Omu years ago to fish in the State, you probably feel that Ogun State indigenes, especially that of Sagamu, can be wiped out in the same net your ancestral used to catch fish in Ijebu-Omu. Foul, Lanre Banjo is not destined to be in that net.

Otunba Dipo Dina has received one or two threatening letters from your Strike Force and some beatings from your henchmen. All these are devoid of my personal experience after I left Ogun State Television on Tuesday, October 18, 2005, when some people in a pick up trailed me to Sagamu with guns. Thereafter, someone went to my father's house to say that he was given N100,000 to finish me and he would have carried the operation out on Wednesday, March 22, 2006 when he saw me on Oyebajo Street in Sagamu, but he had a second thought. As if this appearance is not bad enough, you were quoted in an interview granted to Elendureport that the 2007 elections will be bloody in Ogun State and you are fully ready for it to keep your misrule aloft.

In all of these incidents, when culprits delivering your death messages are arrested, the police, who are increasingly becoming the agents of repression of the people, were usually influenced to prevent your agents from prosecution and this has continued to embolden them. Yet, as an innate liar and a deceiver, you always claim ignorance, when the elders who are close to you approach you about all these criminal activities. With all these political killings and harassment, you as the man imposed on Ogun State has never deemed it proper to call a press conference with the police to denounce such a barbaric act and then come up with a plan of action to arrest the situation and discourage further assassination of political opponents. Instead, you always boast of violence.

I am convinced that morals of Nigerians, which is being destroyed by the bad leadership of those in government, cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. This is your duty, if you are not the masquerade behind the mask. Gbenga, you are warned, violence is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than winning his understanding. It seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Lanre Banjo would not yield because if I succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle for freedom, future generations will be the recipients of a desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to them will be an endless reign of senseless and revengeful chaos. Violence is not the way, brother, because it is antithesis of creativity and wholeness that destroys community.

If governing is about service to humanity and not about you viewing co-contestants as candidates who will prevent further looting of the treasury, why should you either result to killing, condone or abet killing of political opponents. If you performed wonderfully well in the "new" Ogun State, not good enough for your seven-year old child to study, instead of studying in London, why don't you allow the electorates to decide? Why? This seven-year old child of yours is still expected to be under your tutelage. Alas! You have now denied him the privilege to be a true Yoruba in the name of class denied the masses of our people. I know you are darkened in your understanding and separated from the life of God because of ignorance that is in you, due to the hardening of your heart. Having lost all sensitivity, you have given yourself over to sensuality, so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more. Gbenga, as a Christian, you will not rest in peace with Christ this way.

Well, unlike other gubernatorial candidates who have written to you talking about how much they love their wives and children, I am not in love with any wife, who is a slave, neither do I have children who are slaves. No love of any woman or any child is greater, in my mind, than the liberation of the oppressed masses among who are my children and wife, and I rather die than to see them in suffering. Suffering in a society full of sickening deadweight of mediocre rulers like your poor self, rulers engaging in brain killing propaganda to mislead, cajole and destroy the psyche of the governed. So, Gbenga, if my death is in your hand, I beg you in the name of God that you go to the Church to worship and the one you worship in lodges, to bring it on. I would never be afraid of you and your followers.

Bring it on so that your entire family can see the burning anger of God. I have been told that you believe a lot in juju and other devilish spiritual powers, if the life of Late Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola in spite of his claimed invincibility has not taught you a lesson that juju would not save you from the judgment of God, then please your fancy. Please, your fancy brother!

As the Holy book says to a wicked man in the book of Ezekiel, "If you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his evil ways in order to save his life, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. But if you do warn the wicked man {and his followers} and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his evil ways, he will die for his sin, but you will have saved yourself." I have done my part by warning you, son of Daniel. Little word is enough for the wise. Do not bring terminal anathema to your fruits and generation yet unborn for the wrath of God shall come heavily on generations of anyone planning to terminate my life.

The children of the planners, authorizers, executors and anyone with knowledge of it will be wandering beggars and no one including Baba Iyabo will extend kindness to them. Their descendants shall be cut off, and their names would be blotted out from the next generation. Those plotting to kill me will be clothed with disgrace and wrapped in shame as in a cloak. Their ways shall be dark and the angel of God shall chase them even in their graves, they would have no peace. May your lips and every lip that read this bless these prayers. (ASE, Afo gbohun)

I have no doubt in my mind that, as future events unfold themselves, it will become clearer and clearer that the cause for which you are now scheming to immolate me is a just and eternal one for which I am packed ready to lay down my life. This is the cause of social justice for all, including your children, and of relentless opposition to the Peoples Democratic Party's (PDP) feudal oligarchy and maintenance of its might over our people.

Without regard to the man who wants me dead,

Lanre Banjo
2007 Ogun State Gubernatorial Candidate, NCP

cc:	Mr. Sunday Ehindero, Inspector General of Police
	Members of the Public
	Dr. Osagie Obayuwana, the National Chairman, NCP
	Mr. Femi Falana, legal counsel and Deputy National Chairman, SW
	Mr. Kehinde Nubi, Ogun State Chairman, NCP 

Ogbeni Lanre Banjo was NCP Ogun State Gubernatorial Candidate, 2007