The crisis in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kwara state is traceable to the attempt by the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed to make himself a godfather that Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq must either defer to or be stampeded, Senator Suleiman Ajadi alleged on Friday.
Ajadi, a chieftain of the party, told reporters in Ilorin that the Minister was using the former APC chairman, Bashir Omolaja Bolarinwa to destabilise the state with propaganda and anti-party activities.
Ajadi said the minister has perfected plans to either stop the party’s registration through a phantom court case or premeditated unrest using some of his loyalists in the state.
The plan included the filing of a court case on January 29 by some of the minister’s loyalists to halt the registration, Ajadi said, adding that the weak nature of the case has seen the minister instigating his loyalists led by the former chairman to resort to self help to stampede the committee from the national secretariat in Abuja.
“The person to be blamed is the Honorable Minister for Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed. He brought BOB to Kwara State to come and be the Chairman of the Caretaker Committee. He was imposed from Abuja, there was no election. Even before the election he was encouraging BOB to disrespect the then gubernatorial candidate to the point of not attending the rally at that time,” the senator said.
“Ask anybody, the former Chairman hardly attended rallies with the governorship candidate then. And after he won the election, they continued their antics of propagating their lies against the governor. How can a state chairman of the party be going and encouraging others to go to radio stations to disparage the governor of the state? They were openly discrediting the Governor under the guise of not carrying them along. How can you be disparaging somebody and you are accusing him of not carrying you along? Taking you along for what? Most of the people fighting this battle against him, he made their children SA this and that. He is doing projects in their communities. I don’t know the meaning of ‘he is not taking them along.’ Nobody knows the meaning; maybe they just want to be sharing money. But if Alhaji Lai Mohammed had called the chairman he brought to order all along it would not have gone this far.
“And it was because Alhaji Lai Mohammed is claiming to be the leader of the party in Kwara state. Take it that when we had no governor, Honorable Minister could be the party leader for that state. But when we now have a substantive governor how can you be claiming to be the party leader and trying to give orders, telling the governor where he should go and where he should not go?
“I remember a case when the governor wanted to go and meet Baba Buhari in Akwa Ibom, I saw the text message of Alhaji Lai Mohammed telling the governor that he should not go. How do you command the governor not to go to where he wants to perform his official function?”
