Date: 2021-01-17

Chief Iyiola Oyedepo, the spokesperson for the Elders Caucus of the Kwara State All Progressives Congress loyal to the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Senator Gbemisola Saraki, (Minister of State for Transportion), among others, speaks with TUNDE OYEKOLA about the crisis rocking the party in the state. The group has accused the governor, Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq, of not carrying party members along in his decisions Recently, there was a botched attempt to remove Mr Bashir Bolarinwa as the chairman of the Kwara State APC. Why is the party divided?

I can say there is a real crisis in our party and I don't need to pretend about this. This crisis has to do with the formation of the party. As of August 2018, there were four tendencies that formed the APC in Kwara State, namely Akogun group, Lai Mohammed group, Gbemisola Saraki group and Sunday Fagbemi group. Actually, what we ought to have done shortly after the election was to bring the four groups together under a programme headed by the governor. We failed to do that and the party has remained divided along those four lines.

Your group, at a press conference before the swearing-in of the caretaker committee, alleged that the governor went to Abuja to submit the name of another person to be sworn in as the chairman of the state caretaker committee instead of Bolarinwa. Could you substantiate this allegation?

If we could not substantiate the allegation, we would not have addressed the press conference which you referred to. Firstly, Bolarinwa was not invited to a meeting earlier held with chairmen of the APC in the other 35 states. That means some people have gone to inform the APC National Caretaker Committee headed by Governor Mai Buni (of Yobe State) on the position of the APC in Kwara State. Bolarinwa went to Abuja and because of the intervention of some party leaders, he was sworn in as the chairman of the caretaker committee of the party along with others. On the day of the swearing-in, we saw some people that were close to the factional interest of the governor who were at the venue and fully prepared for the swearing-in ceremony. This we can substantiate because Bolarinwa was not originally invited and people who did not want him to be sworn in were also there, preparing to be sworn in.

The AA group within the party alleged that the party Executive put in place in 2018 was a temporary arrangement; do you think the party executive was not properly constituted then?

I don't know where they got that argument from. We were all there in August 2018 when we put in a nine-member caretaker committee; two members from each of the four groups and Bolarinwa as the ninth member was asked to be the head. That caretaker committee didn't last for more than one or two months, and around October, the committee was expanded and it was reconstituted to a full-fledged executive through consensus of all members of the four groups. So, it was no longer a caretaker but a full-fledged party executive.

You claimed that the composition of the state APC executive had been settled by the Supreme Court but the other group maintained that the executive led by Mr Bolarinwa was a caretaker committee which should not be succeeded by another caretaker committee, would you say this was right?

No! I have said it earlier that the party executive led by Bolarinwa was not a caretaker committee; it was put together by all of us. It was the executive of the party that conducted the party primary elections from the state House of Assembly to the National Assembly as well as the governorship primaries. It was not a caretaker committee but a full-fledged structure and the issue of the authenticity of the party executive had been settled by the Supreme Court. Ishola Balogun-Fulani was the chairman of the APC before we got to the party, but when Senator Bukola Saraki moved from the APC to the PDP in 2018, Balogun-Fulani was supposed to move with them to the PDP. However, he was planted in our party to be a mole and disrupt the party. Balogun-Fulani went to court and the case was settled in favour of Bolarinwa. I don't know where the other group got the information that it was a caretaker committee.

The AA caucus accused your Elders Caucus of an attempt to drag the party to the Dark Ages, how do you react to this?

I don't know the meaning of what they mean by 'Dark Ages'. But if there is any group within the APC that wants to draw us back to the Dark Ages or destroy the party, it is the AA group. This is so because we fought for a government and the government is now in place and they are now behaving undemocratically-doing things without consultation and wanting to remove the structure that put them in office. Who should be accused of taking the party to the Dark Ages? It is the AA group.

Bolarinwa during the swearing in of the caretaker committee of the party said all was not well within the party, what do you make of this?

I have said it earlier that the four tendencies that formed the party in the state are no longer working together, three of the groups are now together while one of the four is headed by the governor who is not prepared to work with the three other groups. But it is a question of time to know who owns the party.

What is the way forward for the party to achieve unity before another general election?

If the governor wants to strengthen the party, he should forget about ego, he should come down from the tower and beckon to all the party members and embrace peace. He should sit down with us and decide on how we can administer the party and move it forward. We still need to sit down and embrace unity so that we can achieve what we want and move the state forward.