- It’s a wishful, unrealistic thought, Kogi, Ondo govs’ camps reply
By Samuel Alonge
Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State, and his Ondo State counterpart, Mr. Rotimi Akeredolu, may be in for a rough time in their separate bids to secure the governorship tickets of the All Progressives Congress to renew their mandate in office.
This is because a pressure group within the ruling APC and believed to have been sponsored by a leading godfather of the party based in Lagos, is set to stand on their ways.
Particularly, the group is starting with the Kogi governor, whom it has described as “unsellable,” advising him not to present himself for the party’s forthcoming primary election in the state.
The group, Change Agent Foundation International, an offshoot of the powerful APC Mandate Group that stopped the second term ambition of former governor Akinwumi Ambode in Lagos, said it had taken over the party’s structures in Kogi and would in due course unfold its preferred governorship candidate in this year’s governorship election in the state.
Rising from an emergency meeting held in Lagos, CAFI President, Mr. Dipo Okeyomi, told our correspondent that “APC must not pick Governor Bello as its candidate in view of the clear fact that the governor is no longer sellable to the electorate.”
According to him, the governor currently owes public workers 34 months salary, a condition which he said, has scandalised the party in the state.
Okeyomi said, “It his inhuman to pile up such a huge arrears of unpaid salaries and APC should, in fact, suspend Governor Bello for acting contrary to the welfare policy of our great party.
“At least, four senior civil servants have committed suicide as a result of hunger and frustration arising from non-payment of salary, and this is aside from the fact that the governor behaves like an unripe banana in the way he keeps intimidating and sending thugs after people with dissenting voices, a behaviour that that is alien to the spirit and letter of the APC.”
He noted that the CAFI would mobilise against the governor and ensure that he does not win the APC primary, either by party consensus, delegate election or direct primary election.
Okeyomi further accused Governor Bello of being “the leading light behind the gang-up to remove Comrade Adams Oshiomhole as APC national chairman.”
But in a swift reaction, Governor Bello dismissed the CAFI as an impostor, insisting that there is no such group in the APC.
In a statement issued on his behalf by the Director General (Media and Publicity) of Yahaya Bello Campaign Organisation, Mr. Fanwo Kingsley, the governor said, “There is no group within the APC known as Change Agent Foundation International (CAFI).”
The statement added, “Our attention has been drawn to a group of impostors, who claimed fraudulently to be duly accredited to operate from within the APC as a pressure group.
“The fact that they chose to sit in Lagos State to articulate issues about Kogi State is an indication that they have no grasp of events in the state. They have chosen to be tools in the hands of people, who are bent on destroying the state for the sake of their inordinate ambition.
“It is merely a group of political charlatans and political jobbers working for the money they collected to do a hatchet job on Governor Yahaya Bello and the APC in Kogi State, a job which is dead on arrival.
“The Nigerian Constitution, the Electoral Act, the APC Constitution and sundry guidelines provide clearly how the flagbearer of a party emerges in every election.
“CAFI displayed her bias and disrespect for law and due process, when they declared that the ‘APC must not pick Governor Yahaya Bello as its candidate’. Is that not for the delegates to decide at the primaries and citizens at the elections proper? CAFI has come to equity with bribe-soiled hands and is no longer entitled to be heard, much less seen, in this matter.
“Like their sponsors, CAFI has shown uncommon disdain to constitutional process and the brightness of our chances in November. Their leaders fought ferociously against the party to discredit the political credentials of the party in the February and March elections.
“They were shocked by the support of the Kogi people for the party and the leadership of the governor. They are now calling on the party not to give its ticket to a tested and trusted winner just because they have a pact with the locusts that want to return to power with the intent of destabilising our party. The plan is dead on arrival.
“First was the Lokoja/Koto Federal Constituency bye-elections last August, which the APC led by Governor Bello, won with 26,860, nearly doubling the votes recorded by the PDP, which came second with 14,845.
“Second was the 2019 general elections in which the Kogi people delivered the state to the APC, led by Governor Yahaya Bello, as we won over 95% of all votes cast. President Muhammadu Buhari recorded 285,894, to defeat his main challenger, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar who polled 218,207.
“Governor Bello and the APC went on to produce two senators out of three, seven Representatives members out of nine and 25 state assemblymen out of 25-an unprecedented record and the most devastating win by any party in any election in Kogi State.
“Governor Yahaya Bello has grown the APC in Kogi State from about 50,000 registered members in 2016 to over 500,000 now. The rank of the governing party has been expanded by almost the entire PDP structure in the state, whose members have been defecting in droves to support and endorse the governor’s re-election bid.”
The governor also denied the allegation that he owed the state’s workers 34 months’ salary. Kingsley, in the statement, explained, saying, “CAFI lied.”
He said, “Governor Yahaya Bello does not owe workers 34 months’ salary. Currently, there is three months’ outstanding at the state, which is actually a carryover of the three months owed state civil servants.
“Nine months are owed teachers, with 25 months of accumulated percentages owed local government workers spread over the past eight years.
“Even the inherited three months’ salary will be defrayed in the weeks ahead.”
Besides, the governor put a lie to the CAFI allegation that no fewer than four senior public workers committed suicide as a result of hunger and frustration.
Kingsley added, “Again, CAFI lied. We wait for them to publish the names and death certificates of the alleged suicides so we can properly engage them at the proper venue for fake news and cybercrimes.
“CAFI lied. Governor Yahaya Bello brought peace and security to Kogi State. From being the kidnap capital of the country when he came into office in 2016, Kogi is now rated the second most peaceful state in the country and the most peaceful in the entire North by the Nigerian Peace Index. The National Bureau of Statistics also rates Kogi as the state with the second lowest crime rate in the country. These claims can easily be verified if CAFI was not peopled by intellectual ducks.
“CAFI is welcome to try its hands on selling the expired products they are working for, to the people of Kogi State and let us see how the people will respond. Their products were rejected in February and March 2019 and will be rejected again in November 2019.”
Also, the governor said there was no known tiff between him and Oshiomhole.
“All is well between Governor Yahaya Bello and Comrade Oshiomhole, the APC national chairman. The governor is not working towards any change in the National Working Committee of the party, or any other organs thereof at this time,” the statement clarified.
Investigations by our correspondent revealed that the CAFI is backed by a popular chieftain of the party based in Lagos, and may pressure the APC to conduct a direct primary election in Kogi State, as was done in Lagos, with the aim of working towards the defeat of Governor Yahaya Bello, like it happened to Governor Ambode in Lagos.
Besides, Okeyomi said the group would also move against the re-election of Ondo’s Governor Rotimi Akeredolu in the November 2020 election.
He accused Akeredolu of various anti-party activities, saying the governor abandoned the APC candidates and fielded his preferred candidates on the platform of Action Alliance in the last House of Representatives and senatorial elections in the state, a situation that gave the opposition Peoples Democratic party the leverage to defeat the APC in the Ondo Central and South senatorial districts.
“As long as this group remains alive, Akeredolu too can never hold the APC governorship ticket in Ondo State,” Okeyomi vowed.
But in a statement defending the governor, a pressure group in the Ondo APC-The Young Flyers, denied the allegation that Akeredolu worked against his party, the APC.
In a statement in Lagos by its President, Mr. Clement Adeyanju, and secretary, Mrs. Esther Buraimoh, the group said the accusation of anti-party activities levelled against the governor was a concoction by some desperate politicians keen on securing the party’s governorship ticket in the November 2020 election.
TYF said, “There was no way the governor would have worked against the party in the last general election. It is true that some candidates endorsed by Akeredolu did not scale through at the party’s conventional primary but he still went ahead to mobilise support for all the APC candidates during the election.
“But the truth of the matter is that, some aggrieved party members who knew that the governor actually supported popular candidates went on their own to do protest votes for the opposition PDP.
“As you all know, Ondo State people are egalitarian in nature and detest imposition in whatever form; this was simply demonstrated in the outcome of the last general elections in which the APC performed abysmally in the Ondo South and Central senatorial districts.
It added that it was Akeredolu who eventually saved the day by going round the state to assuage frayed nerves “among our teeming members, which resulted in the massive victory recorded by the APC in the state’s House of Assembly elections.”
