Leaders and elders of the Kwara State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC), have tackled the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, over comments denigrating Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq.
The elders, under the aegis of Kwara APC Elders Caucus, were reacting to the disparaging comments made by the minister about the governor in a recent newspaper interview.
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According to their spokesman, Ambassador Nurudeen Mohammed, at a news conference in Ilorin, on Monday: “For Lai Mohammed to denigrate Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq political status in Kwara State and his role in the funding of the 2019 elections is most unfortunate”.
Mohammed said the minister was exported to the state from Lagos to come and take over governance like his colleagues in other Yoruba states at the expense of the politicians who had been on the ground for decades.
Recalling that the minister was the Chief of Staff to the first Lagos State Governor in the 4th Republic, the APC elders’ spokesman said; “it is only Lai Mohammed who has failed to win in his state where he contested in 2003 among his Lagos colleagues sent out to contest governorship seat.
“The question one would like to ask is why he failed in the election.
“The answer should be obvious. Lai Mohammed was never seen in Kwara in the Second Republic politics nor was he ever heard of in the political landscape of Kwara State politics of the Third Republic.
“He was an unknown quantity in those days. He has all along been a de facto Lagosian rather than being a Kwara.”
On the contrary, Ambassador Mohammed said: “For all that it is worth, when we talk of political pedigree and dynasty, Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq belongs to the most well known political lineage in Ilorin.”
On the funding of the 2019 elections in Kwara State, he noted that the governor and members of the state and national assemblies had denied receiving a dime from the minister.
As a way forward, Mohammed urged the minister: “To rethink and modify his view as expressed in the interview where he asserted that reconciliation will be difficult.
“Nothing is difficult to achieve in this era of reintegration and reconciliation where there is the will to do so.
“Nothing is difficult in establishing a friendly relationship when people have cultivated the spirit of love,” he added.
Reacting to the development, a member of the minister’s caucus in Kwara and the factional Financial Secretary of the APC in the state, Tajudeen Mohammed, told Daily Trust that the so-called AA elders were jesters.
“If they now say the minister is not on the ground, how did their leader, the governor emerge.
“The minister worked for the victory of everybody during the election.
“And on the issue of reconciliation, we are not the ones that are fighting the party, it is them,” Tajudeen added.
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