The closed-door meeting between the national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Bola Tinubu, chairman of the Lagos State chapter, Chief Henry Ajomale and governorship aspirants in the state, on Sunday, did not resolve all the differences tugging at the heart of the party after all.
An aspirant in attendance, however, confirmed that Tinubu dissociated himself from the alleged endorsement of any candidate for the party’s governorship ticket.
There had been reports that he was supporting a former Accountant-General of the state, Mr Akinwumi Ambode.
The meeting, held at Tinubu’s Bourdillion residence, as exclusively reported by our sister publication, Sunday Tribune, was said to have commenced with the leader’s admonition to the aggrieved aspirants not to dump the party for opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as being reportedly planned by them, should anyone emerge as candidate without primaries.
“Oga started by saying he trust us not to defect. That he heard about the planned defection, but knows his own people would never join a party like PDP. We knew he was just psyching us up,” the aspirant revealed.
He further disclosed that “he also told all of us that he was not supporting anybody and he was particular about the Ambode saga. He said anybody saying he is supporting him is just a name dropper. We hope he is being sincere.”
In the aspirants’ bid to check on the sincerity of Tinubu’s assurance, youths loyal to them were, on Tuesday, surreptitiously sent to APC youth summit, Nigerian Tribune learnt on Tuesday evening.
The move was reportedly to check if the summit was still a ploy to garner support for Ambode indirectly, in order to dictate their next line of action.
At the Sunday meeting, it was also reportedly agreed that there should be primaries in which all the aspirants should participate.
At this point, a frontline aspirant (names withheld) was said to have asked him for the modalities for the emergence of delegates, signaling their rejection and end of the controversial delegate list that emanated from the contentious ward and local government congresses the party had recently.
Tinubu was said to have turned to Ajomale for a response to the aspirant’s request, with the party chairman reportedly telling the inquisitive aspirant that the modalities were not ready.
Ajomale’s response was said not to have gone down well with the aspirant and others, as they reportedly argued that with primaries fixed for December 2, it was not acceptable that modalities were not yet available.
Another meeting was reportedly requested between the aspirants and the party leadership, to fashion out the modalities, with the end of November tentatively fixed for it.
The aspirants, however, demanded at the meeting that primaries should hold in the original 20 local government areas in the state, listed in the operational 1999 Constitution, to forestall a situation where aggrieved persons would approach courts at the last minute and void the emergence of the party’s candidate, by saying that the 37 local council development associations (LCDAs) were not listed in the constitution.
They argued that such move could be at the zero hour, which could make the party not to field a candidate in the 2015 governorship election, since it could be easily argued that those LCDAs were not known to law and could not participate in the processes of the emergence of a new governor.
The party leadership reportedly succumbed to the superior argument provided by the aspirants.
The aspirants also demanded that as a part of the primaries’ modalities, only executive members of the party in those 20 local government areas should respectively pick the delegates for the primaries.
An aspirant told the Nigerian Tribune that the era of party leadership sitting with certain influential individuals to compile delegates’ list was over in the party.
In the alternative, the aspirants demanded a direct primaries where all the party members in the state would participate.
A frontline aspirant told the Nigerian Tribune that “all we are doing is to ensure the process is not compromised and manipulated.”
Meanwhile, another controversy is said to be brewing over a House of Representatives ticket, said to have been conceded to the son of a prominent traditional ruler in the state, but now being contested by a senior party official.
Also a senatorial aspirant for Lagos Central, Mr Tokunbo Odutola, has vowed not to step down for the incumbent Senator Remi Tinubu.
Culled from Nigerian Tribune