By A protest by members of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) across major motor parks in Osogbo on Monday, ostensibly called to demand action over recent political killings in Osun State, has become the subject of competing accounts, with some witnesses describing it not as a spontaneous show of grief but as a coordinated action by transport workers aligned with the All Progressives Congress (APC) to seize control of parks in the state capital.
The official account: a protest over killings
According to reports, the protest followed attacks on APC members in Osogbo in which two adults were killed and a toddler later died from gunshot injuries.
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Members of the union, alongside civil society groups and students, converged at the Nelson Mandela Freedom Park near Old Garage before marching through Old Garage, Orisunbare, Olaiya, and Aregbe, carrying placards that read “Osun is not safe under Alowonle’s leadership,” “Adeleke, save the souls of Osun people,” and “Police must arrest Alowonle over alleged murder,” among others. The demonstrators passed a vote of no confidence in the union’s state chairman, Nurudeen Alowonle, whom associates of the victims have accused of involvement in the killings, an allegation yet to be substantiated by law enforcement.
The union’s Secretary, Alhaji Fatai Oyegoke, told journalists at the scene that Alowonle’s conduct had crippled transport operations statewide and called on the Inspector-General of Police, Tunji Disu, to intervene. He alleged that Alowonle and an associate, Sikiru Oyeniyi (also known as Ado Igbona), had spearheaded the killing of one Adelodun Olamilekan Lateef and others over the preceding five days, triggering retaliatory attacks across motor parks. The Director of Mobilisation of the Local Government Development Initiative, Comrade Omololu Abidoye, described the situation as an indictment of the police and other security agencies and called for their intervention.
Another picture on the ground
However, this account diverges sharply from what some observers have described. According to these accounts, those who took part in the demonstration were not a neutral coalition of aggrieved transport workers and civil society groups but predominantly APC-aligned union members, and the gathering was accompanied by an active police escort, said to be visible in photographs and video footage circulating from the scene.
These accounts further allege that gunfire was discharged at Aregbe park, where shop owners took to their feels in panic during the course of the protest. Conversely, that event was presented publicly as a peaceful demonstration, but in fact functioned as a coordinated takeover of motor parks across Osogbo by transport workers loyal to the APC, rather than a straightforward expression of public grief or a call for justice. According to this narrative, order was only restored to the affected parks once operatives of the Police Mobile Force and personnel of the Nigerian Army were deployed to the areas.
Why the competing accounts matter
The divergence is not incidental. Osun is barely a month from its August 15 governorship election, and the NURTW’s Osun leadership has for months been a flashpoint in the wider contest between the APC and the state’s ruling party, with both sides trading accusations over a string of killings linked to rival factions of the union. The Osun APC campaign council has previously alleged that a succession of its members and NURTW figures aligned with the party were killed between 2022 and 2023 by individuals it associated with appointees of Governor Ademola Adeleke, while separate civil society protests in the state in recent weeks have called for an end to what they describe as escalating political violence ahead of the election.
Against that backdrop, a protest ostensibly organized around grief and a demand for justice, but alleged by some witnesses to double as a politically aligned mobilization over control of Osogbo’s motor parks, illustrates how contested and difficult to disentangle the state’s transport union politics have become from its wider electoral battle.
Unverified claims, and what remains unconfirmed
It should be stressed that the claims regarding the protesters’ political alignment, the discharge of firearms, the presence of a police escort, and the characterization of the event as a calculated park takeover are, at this stage, based on eyewitness accounts that have not been confirmed by the Osun State Police Command or the NURTW leadership. Similarly, the allegations against Alowonle and his associate remain unproven claims from the victims’ associates, and law enforcement has not confirmed any arrests or findings in relation to the killings referenced during the protest.
Given the sensitivity of the matter and its proximity to a keenly contested governorship election, readers should treat both the protest’s stated justification and the alternative account of its true character as competing, unverified narratives pending an official position from the Osun State Police Command.
