The National leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has berated the aggrieved members of the party saying they were bad losers following the post-primary election crisis currently rocking the ruling party.
The APC said the disapproval being expressed by some of its senior party members over the party’s primaries was because they had failed to have their way during the exercise.
The party accusing its senior members said further that it was public knowledge that some of its highly placed members were not only taking their loss at the polls very badly, but were looking for scapegoats to take the fall for their failure.
The National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, made the position of the national leadership of the party known during an interview on Wednesday at the party secretariat in Abuja.
Mr. Onilku directed his responses specifically to the governor of Ogun state, Ibikunle Amosun, as well as the Director-General of the Voice of Nigeria, Osita Okechukwu.
The party spokesperson alleged that Amosun was embittered because his attempt to foist a candidate on the people, using undemocratic means, failed, describing the situation in Ogun State as a straightforward one.
“If we speak to the merit of this case, the Ogun State governor –the whole world saw it, the visuals were everywhere where he gathered some aspirants, stakeholders and said clearly, there won’t be primaries and right there he pointed at whom the next governor would be. He pointed to another person, ‘this one, you are the next senator, House of Reps etc and himself the next senatorial candidate and he dished out these positions out there.” Onilu said.
The APC spokesman said further that naturally, party members in the state reacted, stressing that even if the party stakeholders in the state accepted it, the party headquarters would not because the process was foreign to the constitution of the party. He continued further;
“In the case of Ogun, after that exercise failed after they tried to handpick who will be what, they sent a letter that they had agreed on direct primary and the party had no choice but to endorse what you want.
On the day they all came for screening, including the governor, suddenly they left other aspirants and returned to Abeokuta, gathered some people and sent back to the National Working Committee that they wanted indirect primary and the other aspirants said we were all here together, that they didn’t know when this change was made.”
Issa-Onilu also referred to an existing court order barring the Ogun State Executive Council of the APC from party activities but the Amosun and those allied with him defied the court order and went ahead to carry out an illegal exercise which they wanted the NEC to validate.
“The governor has done his best to get validation for this self-help. That is not possible. The first thing he did was to start saying things that made it look like something wrong has happened when nothing of such has happened.
Secondly, he took certain monarchs, some traditional rulers from Ogun State to come and meet the president. I am surprised because someone like him, with due respect to him, should have understood the nature of the president we have, that no matter how close you are to him, he will listen to you but he will ask for the road to be followed.
So, the problem he has is that, he was looking for whom to blame and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and Aremo Segun Osoba readily came under attack and he blamed them for that.”
Onilu told the newsmen that the right questions to ask was if Tinubu and Osoba directed the Ogun state governor to organise his own primaries or whether they were the ones who instructed him and his candidate not to participate in primaries organised by the party.
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He also took the opportunity to respond to protests against the national chairman of the party Adams Oshiomhole, by the Director-General of the VON, Osita Okwechukwu, describing it as unfortunate.
“You can also understand that it is not about him and the party, it is about him picking the senatorial ticket of his constituency and that is about ambition, and when that does not happen, you don’t expect him not to cry, he has every right to ventilate his anger and it is for the party to also listen to him.
He may have gone overboard to make all sorts of ill-accusation but you also have to understand his present situation, he lost out. If that same process had favoured him, he would be in his office, in an air conditioned atmosphere, drinking coffee and taking a laugh at whoever is complaining but it didn’t work for him.” He said
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