The crisis in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is traceable to the Minister of Information Lai Mohammed, according to Suleiman Ajadi, a former Senator, who has accused the minister of seeking to be the godfather of Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq.
Speaking with reporters in Ilorin, the State capital, Ajadi alleged that the Minister is using the former APC chairman Bashir Omolaja Bolarinwa to destabilise the state.
Ajadi alleged that the minister has perfected plans to either stop the party’s registration through a phantom court case or using some of his loyalists in the state.
Earlier in the week, members of the APC in Kwara exchanged blows at one of the venues of the ongoing membership registration.
“The person to be blamed is the Honorable Minister for Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Muhammed. He brought BoB to Kwara State to come and be the Chairman of the Caretaker Committee. Even before the election, he was encouraging BOB to disrespect the then gubernatorial candidate to the point of not attending the rally at that time,” the senator said.
“Ask anybody, the former Chairman hardly attended rallies with the governorship candidate then. And after he won the election, they continued their antics of propagating their lies against the governor. How can a state chairman of the party be going and encouraging others to go to radio stations to disparage the governor of the state? They were openly discrediting the Governor under the guise of not carrying them along. How can you be disparaging somebody and you are accusing him of not carrying you along? Taking you along for what?
“Most of the people fighting this battle against him, he made their children SA this and that. He is doing projects in their communities. I don’t know the meaning of he is not taking them along. Nobody knows the meaning… if Alhaji Lai Muhammed had called the chairman he brought to order all along, it would not have gone this far.
“And it was because Alhaji Lai Muhammed is claiming to be the leader of the party in Kwara state. Take it that when we had no governor, honorable minister could be the party leader for that state. But when we now have a substantive governor, how can you be claiming to be the party leader and trying to give orders, telling the governor where he should go and where he should not go?
“I remember a case when the governor wanted to go and meet Baba Buhari in Akwa Ibom, I saw the text message of Alhaji Lai Muhammed telling the governor that he should not go. How do you command the governor not to go to where he wants to perform his official function?
“Now, when they wanted to re-appoint this BOB, many of us raised this issue that he was a caretaker chairman. How do you say you want the caretaker chairman to succeed himself as caretetaker chairman again? The current caretaker chairmen in other states were substantive chairmen of the party in their states. But Alhaji Lai felt this is the one he can use and he wants to continue using him to fight the battle against the governor of the state.
“Do you know that Alhaji Lai has instituted a court action against APC? There is a court action; you can see it (waving the court papers). This is a court action that was arranged by the Minister for Information and Culture that they should stop Alhaji Abdullahi Samari from parading himself as the chairman of the caretaker committee and that this registration exercise should not continue. How can you say that a registration exercise that is going on in all the 36 states of the federation including the FCT be stopped in your own state? If people can call Alhaji Lai Muhammed to order, there will be peace and if he wants to continue that way we are ready for him. There is nobody that will be allowed to spoil this party for us in Kwara state, because if they destroy it there is no where else we can go. He can go back to Lagos.”
As of the time of filing this report, Segun Adeyemi, Media Aide of the Minister, had not responded to a message seeking his reaction to the allegations.
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