A former Financial Secretary of the All Progressives Congress in Oyo State, Alhaji Kayode Adanla, speaks with WALE OYEWALE on the root of the party’s crisis in the state and the recent appointment of former governor Abiola Ajimobi as the Deputy National Chairman of the party
APC in Oyo State is having some crisis. What is the genesis?
Impunity is the genesis of the crisis in the All Progressives Congress in Oyo State. former Governor Abiola Ajimobi and the executive council members that are loyal to him are the problem of the party. They breached the party’s constitution and ran its affairs the way they liked. Their acts boil down to impunity.
Why are many people against the nomination of former governor Abiola Ajimobi as the deputy national chairman of the party?
There is no way that can fly if the national body of the APC wants the party to succeed in Oyo State and South-West in general. How can you say a failure can still be the party’s deputy national chairman? We are talking of a party that he destroyed single-handedly. He is a political liability. Abiola Ajimobi does not regard anybody as amounting to anything. He had destiny helpers that came to his aid to make him governor in 2011. Today, in Oyo State, he has rubbished everybody that helped him to realise his ambition. He wants to be an emperor. He has got what he wants; he believes he doesn’t want anybody again. Progressives are not like that. There are revered personalities who keep the party together from across the state. The elders, who are called gatekeepers, have been in politics since the days of Action Group and they are still alive. You cannot rubbish them; they are the establishments. Party faithful believe in them and they follow their steps because they are upright. They are comfortable when it comes to playing progressive politics.
We have five local government councils in Ibadan, the state capital. We have Pa Busari Adebisi who is a scholar. He was a big attraction in the defunct Unity Party of Nigeria during Chief Obafemi Awolowo days. Abiola Ajimobi’s father was also one of them. Pa Adebisi played politics in those days with older Ajimobi. We have Chief T.O. Jolaoso (Ibarapa East) and Pa Sulaiman Ajibade, not Yekini (Saki West). These are some of the architects of Ajimobi’s governorship whom he maltreated and dumped. Others are Alhaji Fatai Ibikunle, a former PA to the governor; Alhaji Fatai Ayanyemi, former party Chairman, AD in Ibarapa North; Dr Ismael Adewusi, Lasun Adebunmi, former state secretary, and Chief Abolade Akinyemi, former state Treasurer, AD).
People would wonder why you describe former governor Ajimobi who broke the jinx of ruling the state as governor for two terms as a failure?
Is that a measure to judge him as a leader? That is not a factor. He did not make himself and he was not the one who made it happen. We members of the party were the ones that did that for him. Look at the percentage of votes during the second term; 32 or 33 and half total votes. That is not a good result for a progressive. Go and see the result of the late Lam Adesina and first term result of Abiola Ajimobi. People don’t like him; it was the establishment; the progressives that aided him to win the election. That was responsible for the result of the governorship election of 2019. He said those people were inconsequential. After that, what happened?
Can you highlight other problems besetting the APC as a party, especially in Oyo State?
The cause of the problem is imposition. Sometimes in 2018, we wanted to conduct local government election when Ajimobi was the governor. We held several meetings with him; I was one of the principal officers as the financial secretary of the party. I was there in the meetings. He agreed that we would do primary for all the applicants and whoever emerged would be the candidate for the council election in 2018. We agreed and sent a notice to Oyo State Independent Electoral Commission that we wanted to prepare for the primary. We sold forms to all the aspirants for councillorship and chairmanship positions. At the end of the day, we wanted to do primary but more than two or three times, we got all the materials and arranged everything but Ajimobi stopped the primary. He wanted to be the one to choose those to be councillors and chairmen. He insisted that we should not do the primary again. He said he would choose any candidate that he liked. Thereafter, he went to a hotel at Apata and single-handedly chose all chairmen and councillors at the detriment of party members who bought forms with their hard-earned money. Some people sold their property to buy the forms but at the end of the day, there was no compensation. That was the beginning of the problem and that was what led to the formation of Unity Forum. The forum wanted to call for justice. He told the former chairmen that he would compensate them after winning second term. But when he won the election, he deserted them. The active members came together with some excos and we started agitating; that was how the problem started.
Source; punch
