The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kogi State have vowed to silence the party’s national leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and prevent him from taking over structures in the North-Central region of the country.
They also called on President Muhammadu Buhari to reject James Faleke if nominated as a replacement for the late Minister of State for Labour, James Ocholi, who died in an auto crash in March 2016.
Faleke is believed to be Tinubu’s boy whom the national leader is planning to get appointed as Ocholi’s replacement.
This was made known in a statement issued in Lokoja on Monday, January 2 and jointly signed by the party’s leaders from Kogi West, Alhaji Suleiman Ejibunu and Chief Richard Asaje.
They warned that if Faleke gets the ministerial slot of Kogi State, it would cause “serious crisis” in the party.
“If at all Faleke and his godfather, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, deserve any and not the ministerial slot of Kogi State to avoid serious crisis in the Kogi APC as such a move may lead to the exit of every prominent, loyal and committed member of the party while aggaravating the fractionalisation of the party along many divides.
“We are also unequivocally resolute to stop Tinubu’s expansion into Kogi State or any state in the North-Central; we are determined to push out all his cohorts from Kogi come 2018/2019. It is a task that must be done through all legal/political means. They have failed and they will continue to fail.”
The APC leaders added that they only got to know about Faleke, who is representing Lagos State in the National Assembly, during the last governorship struggle in the state, alleging that Tinubu imposed the lawmaker on the Kogi APC as the deputy governorship candidate to the late Prince Abubakar Audu.
The statement further said: “This generated a lot of discomfort to the founding members of the APC who built the party, fought the then sitting government in all national elections and won. However, we swallowed the pains to fight and win the governorship election in the state.
“Giving him such an appointment will amount to providing him fuel to fire on the breakup of APC in the state. Faleke alongside Honourable Buba Jibril in the West Senatorial Area of Kogi State have formed illegal party structures and lay claim to illegal stakeholder structure for which a petition is already before the national leadership of the party.”
The leaders said if Buhari must compensate Faleke, he should find other means to do it and not hand him a Kogi State ministerial slot.
