Layi Olanrewaju, Ilorin
The leadership crisis rocking the All Progressives Congress(APC) in Kwara state got messier yesterday as some aggrieved members of the state executive council of the party accused the state chairman of the party, Alh Bashir Bolarinwa of running the party like a personal business.
Led by the party’s deputy chairman, Alh Abdullahi Samari the state secretary, Alh Mustapha Ishowo and the state publicity secretary, Folaranmi Aro,the aggrieved party executives numbering 20 also alleged non documentation of the party’s financial transactions.
At a news conference held in Ilorin, the state capital, Samari said, “unfortunately, rather than address the sundry issues that bother on the lack of accountability, transparency, equity, fairness, sacrosanctity of the provisions of the party’s constitution and our demand for same, a cabal within the party executive led by the Hon. Minister for information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, and the state chairman, Hon. Bashir Omolaja Bolarinwa, are deliberately diverting attention from the real issues and instead blaming some imaginary forces for the rising opposition against their autocratic leadership”.
Samari explained that they represent thousands of party men and women who are thoroughly dissatisfied with Bolarinwa’s lack of inclusion and respect for multiple opinions.
The APC executive members however, condemned the alleged attack on the convoy of the chairman in Shao, Moro local government area of the state and enjoined the security agencies to do the needful in bringing the perpetrators to book.
They admitted that members and leaders in Moro are thoroughly aggrieved that the party chairman and his men continue to hold on to the party’s register in manners that violate ethics of transparency and democracy.
In a swift reaction, members of a political group within the party loyal to party’s chairman and the minister of Information, under the aegis of the Kwara APC Integrity Vanguards (KAIV), described the allegations levelled against their patrons as illogical which were drawn from speculations against the party chairman and the minister with a sinister motives to heat up party politics in the state.
The statement signed by its national coordinator and publicity secretary, Abdullahi Yinka Onimasa and Kayode Aliyu Bamidele, respectively, said the aggrieved party leaders were acting divisive script of their sponsor, “targetting our state chairman, Hon. Bashir Bolarinwa, the minister for Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed and other notable leaders of our party who have invested their times, energies and resources, but have today become targets of their daily verbal missiles. This is a clear case of an ingrate king who go for the jugular of those who made him.