A possible clash between the leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kwara State and Senator Bukola Saraki, who recently defected with other members of the breakaway faction of the Peoples Democratic Party, is in the offing, as the former is rejecting a possible handover of the party structure in the state to Saraki, a former governor of the State.
Senator Saraki is considered to be the new godfather of Kwara political structure, after single-handedly ensuring the emergence of current Governor of the state, Abdulfatah Ahmed, against the wish of his own late father.
Part of the carrot dangled by the APC before the seven aggrieved governors of the PDP, five of who finally defected days ago, was that they would automatically take over the party structures in their various states.
Though Governor Ahmed is therefore supposed to take over the leadership of the party in the state logically, it believed that since current Governor of Kwara is 100 percent loyal to Saraki, it goes without saying that the latter would take over the party.
But in a warning delivered to journalists on Thursday, an APC chieftain in the state, Rev. Bunmi Olusona, who spoke on behalf of other party members in the state, said the leadership of the party would not allow Saraki or Governor Ahmed to take over the party, as being planned as it would put the party in crisis especially before and during the 2015 elections.
Reacting to Wednesday’s statement linked to former Chairman of the Kawu Baraje faction of the PDP, Alhaji Ishola Balogun Fulani that the APC into which they are decamping has no structure in the state and that anyone who wants to join the APC must come to them, Rev. Olusona warned against reckless use words from strangers who are being offered the opportunity to make themselves relevant again.
He wondered how a tenant could tell a landlord that he now owns the building that the landlord allowed him to come into. According to him, Fulani and his fellow decampees are up to certain mischief, targeted at forcefully and fraudulently arrogating to themselves what does not belong to them.
“It is so soon to get so desperate, even though we are conscious of the antecedents of these people”, he said, warning the entrants to be prepared to listen to instructions from those they met on ground instead of attempting to take undue advantage.
He said such utterance from Fulani gives the impression that the new PDP was becoming too desperate for the original PDP, thus resulting in the crisis that saw the breaking away of the faction. He warned that the old members of the APC in the state have other options open to them, should the party hierarchy go ahead to install Saraki or Governor Ahmed as the new leaders of the party in the state, as “to be forewarned is to be fore armed”.
However, former Secretary of new PDP in Kwara State, Prince Yemi Afolayan, denied the allegation that his former boss made a comment to the effect that the APC has no structure on the ground. He sued for peace, saying the defection of members of the new PDP is for good.
