Lai Mohammed struggles to unseat Saraki

The political calculations in Kwara State All Progressives Congress (APC) tend to anoint Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information and Culture, as heir apparent to the throne of party leadership in the state.

National Daily gathered that Lai Mohammed Mohammed had at a stakeholders meeting on Sunday at Oro, agitated for the dissolution of the state executive council.

Mohammed, in a statement, indicated that APC would not be left in the hands of double agents. He celebrated his assumed leadership of APC in Kwara State, acknowledging his political profile.

“The issue of my membership of the APC, as well as my contributions to the growth of the party in Kwara and indeed in Nigeria is settled and not subject to any contestation.

“For those who may be engaging in mischief over this, the massive turnout of APC members and supporters to welcome me during my trip home this past weekend for a stakeholders’ consultative meeting should serve as ample confirmation.

“The truth is that those who are making this allegation are the ones who need to validate their membership of our great party, since they have left no one in any doubt about their status as ‘double agents’.

“As far as our members are concerned, these Janus-faced people are just waiting to crash the APC in Kwara before they escape to the other side.

“What has rattled them so much, however, is our decision not to allow them to actualise their nefarious plan.

“That decision was concretised this past weekend when the stakeholders’ meeting resolved, among others, that the current executive committee of the APC in Kwara should be dissolved and a new congress organised at all levels to produce a new set of party executives.

“The stakeholders also want those who got various appointments under the pretext of being APC members to resign immediately or be fired.

“Now that the wheat has been separated from the chaff, APC members and supporters in Kwara are determined to strengthen the party, open its doors to hordes of those willing to join and reposition it ahead of the 2019 general election, with a view to delivering the state to President Muhammadu Buhari. On this, there is no going back,” Lai Mohammed declared

APC Kwara South senatorial chairman, Alhaji Jimoh Balogun, in Ilorin before the dissolution of the Kwara executive, acknowledged that the state party executive led by Balogun-Fulani, remained loyal to the party at the national level.

Alhaji Balogun had maintained that they had not departed from the APC; however, he insisted that members were waiting for directive from their political leader, Dr. Bukola Saraki.

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He declared: “That we advise Lai Mohammed to join hands with the authentic elected APC executive in Kwara State led by Hon. Balogun Fulani as we prepare for 2019 general elections.

“That Lai Mohammed is a Kwaran in the diaspora with antics of surfacing during election period only.

“That Lai Mohammed did not vote in Kwara state during the presidential election that brought in President Muhammadu Buhari.

“That Lai Mohammed has contributed nothing to APC in Kwara state since he became a minister.”

Indeed,

Lai Mohammed had been surviving on political leaders in Lagos State where he carried out virtually all his political activities. However, he has low political capital to uplift APC in Kwara State; may be consumed by the Saraki dynasty established over the years by Oloye Olusola Saraki since the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) era in the 1970s.