Adebayo Adenrele
The Consultative Forum of the Campaign Organisation for Kayode Ojo, a gubernatorial aspirant of All Progressive Congress (APC) has called on the party’s national leadership to ban its secretary, Senator Ajibola Basiru over recent comments, saying any Aspirant can’t win against the incumbent Governor, Biodun Oyebanji.
The group described as another ploy by Oyebanji and his cohorts to drag the image of the national leadership of the party to mud.
The Kayode Ojo Campaign Organisation, in a statement by its Chairman, Consultative Forum, Kayode Oluyemo, described such a desperate statement to cause confusion and heat up the polity in Ekiti State in order to win back an already lost battle ahead of the APC governorship primary election in Ekiti State by Oyebanji through Sen. Basiru as cowardly, irresponsible, unacceptable, deceitful, and hogwash.
The statement reads, ‘Ordinarily, we wouldn’t have joined Governor Oyebanji and his already drowned team on such a statement credited to the National Secretary of our great party, but for the attention of a few unsuspecting members of the public, we just want to put the record straight. As a national secretary, Basiru is expected to be neutral and objective, but rather, he is pushing for the incumbent, and the question is why he is biased and interested in the incumbent. This is contrary to his oath of allegiance and we call on the national chairman and NWC of APC to act now by disallowing Basiru from participating in further processes on the Ekiti governorship primary election in order to guarantee fairness, credibility, and transparency of the poll.
“The said statement was not only prejudiced but also a financially induced personal opinion of Sen. Basiru in an attempt to reward his paymaster in an amateur way in order to deceive the public in the height of desperation and visible jitteriness of Governor Oyebanji and his few remaining camp members ahead of the primary election”.
“It is unfortunate that the same Governor who had claimed that many groups and associations had endorsed him for a second term in office can still be running helter-skelter and trying to hold any image that is being decorated to him as a valued material, including cobwebs, in order to win an election. It is like Governor Oyebanji’s eyes are just being opened now that there are APC leaders in Abuja who are relevant and important to get an APC ticket because it is on record that the Governor had in the past preferred to turn the house of an opposition figure from Ekiti State both in Lagos and Abuja to Mecca by visiting him nearly every week, leaving and regarding the leadership of his party APC as irrelevant.
“The election is here now, and the same Governor who didn’t see APC national, state, local government, and ward executive members of the APC as material needed in the past has started running after them, threatening and circulating sensational statements on their behalf to win political sentiment. It is on record that more than 90 percent of APC wards could not hold their weekly ward meeting in Ekiti State for over two years since the assumption of office of Governor Oyebanji due to his nonchalant attitude and egocentricity of the Governor towards his party members.
“Is it not funny now that the Governor has turned himself into a comedian of Nollywood movies to be dancing naked around over a primary election he had already lost? The Governor is just facing the reality of rejection for not treating party members in Ekiti State fairly and poor performance after all propaganda machinery had failed him.
“He abandoned the party members as a Governor, and someone who is not a Governor has been doing a lot to hold them together just to promote unity and cohesion within the party, but suddenly the governor suddenly woke up from his slumbering because of a second-term ambition, and he think the only thing he can do to win the party’s interest back is lie, character defamation, intimidation, or wasting state resources on ignoble endorsements.
“The resources the present administration had wasted on endorsements and “elitist sympathy” are enough to fix major roads and other infrastructure deficits across the three senatorial districts in the state. What Ekiti people are demanding from Governor Oyebanji is simple: just show us what you have been using the state’s hefty allocations to achieve in the state since October 2022.
“However, we also need to emphasize that contrary to the claim of the national secretary, Engr. Kayode Ojo has paid for and obtained APC nomination and expression forms to contest the party primary with a challenge to the incumbent Governor, Oyebanji and other aspirants to meet him at the field in a free, fair, and transparent poll”.
In his reaction, the Publicity Secretary of APC in Ekiti, Segun Dipe faulted the statement credited to the National Secretary, saying it’s untrue and full of distortion.
“He never said that, what he said was that Governor Oyebanji is rated high and he stands a chance of getting his second term.
“He said even if ten people contested against him, he stands a chance of winning them.
“However, there will still be primary, all gubernatorial aspirants would have to stand for the party’s gubernatorial primary and this has further validated my position, that there would be primary”. Segun Dipe stated
