Lai Mohammed, Saraki, others declare war on Kwara gov

From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja

Crisis rocking the All Progressives Congress (APC), Kwara State chapter, took a disturbing turn, yesterday, when chieftains backed by Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed and Minister of State for Transportation, Olugbemi Saraki, stormed the secretariat of the party to protest the decision of the national leadership to change the state caretaker committee chairman, Bashir Omolaja Bolarinwa.

Reading a prepared text at the secretariat, leader of the 12-man delegation, Akogun Iyiola Oyedepo, boasted that they would not rule out deployment of any action to upturn the decision of the Governor Mai Mala Buni-led APC caretaker committee to remove the state caretaker committee chairman. 

Confirming the involvement of the two ministers in the battle to fight  Governor Abdulrahaman Abdulrazak to a standstill, he said: “We heard it as a rumour until we came face to face with the secretary of the National Caretaker Committee of the APC, Senator John Akpanudoedehe on January 12, 2021. It was the secretary that told us that APC has dethroned our chairman, Bashir Omolaja Bolarinwa on January 11, 2021, by giving a letter of appointment to his deputy, Samari Abdullahi.

“It should be recalled that Bashir Bolarinwa became the chairman of APC October, 2018 and he led the party to 100 per cent victory in the 2019 general elections. He, along with other state chairmen of APC in Nigeria, was sworn in as the Kwara State chairman of the caretaker committee on December 11, 2020.”

On why the chairman was purportedly removed, he said: “The secretary of the National Caretaker Committee told us that the Chairman is said to have been removed on the complaint of the Governor of Kwara State, Abdulrahaman Abdulrazak as he claimed that he could not work with the former.

“The complaint was sustained and made a subject of removal as a result of a connivance between the Governor of Kwara State and his Niger State counterpart and friend, Governor Sanni Bello. The content of the complaints was not made available, neither to the Critical Stakeholders of the party in Kwara State nor to the Chairman, Hon Bolarinwa.

“The decision of the Caretaker Committee was said to be based on the recommendations of the North Central Zone of the party, under the Chairmanship of Sanni Bello. Governor Sanni Bello was said to have recommended that the authentic Chairman of the party should be removed and be made a Commissioner in the cabinet of Kwara State.

“He also recommended that Abdullai Sanmari, the crony of the governor of Kwara State and the leader of Abdulrahman’s splinter AA group within Kwara APC be made the caretaker chairman. With this recommendation, the smallest of the four tendencies that formed the new APC after the exit of Dr Bukola Saraki is now given a political edge that can never work.

“The whole thing appears to be a ploy by the National leadership of the APC to save their unpopular friend from political drowning at the coming congresses of the party in Kwara State,” he said.

On their resolutions, he said: “We have resolved to reject the verdict of the National Caretaker Committee on the purported removal of Hon Bashir Omolaja Bolarinwa. It is worth nothing more than the value of the paper on which the letter given to Hon Sanmari Abdulahi is written.”