Sola POPOOLA
A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress(APC) Chief Segun Ajibulu has expressed concern over an alleged political in- activities within the party in Ekiti State .
He cautioned APC leaders in Ekiti against making Tinubu’s Presidency, a party affairs stressing that it is a sort sort of phenomenal political movement which cuts across party lines.
The former Senatorial aspirant and Leader of the SouthWest Professionals also decried the high number of the uncollected Permanent Voters Card( PVCs) attributing it to lack of proper mobilisation and sensitisation by the party.
Checks from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) revealed that, only 783,796 voter cards have so far been collected out of the 988,923 registered voters in Ekiti, meaning 205, 127 PVCs are yet to be collected..
The APC stalwart, who condemned the alleged poor disposition of the party leadership to the One Million March organised and coordinated by him said such portends great danger for the party.
The pro-Tinubu activist wondered why no rally is being held in Ekiti in support of the political aspiration of the former Lagos State governor and APC Presidential candidate ,Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu(BAT) as it was being done in other SouthWest States.
According to him, the planned one million-man solidarity walk was designed to raise the consciousness of residents of the state on the need to collect their permanent voters card (PVCs) in the ongoing distribution exercise by the Independent National Electoral Commission and be ready to vote for the party’s candidate during the February election.
Ajibulu who accused some unnamed individuals in the state chapter of the party for working against the solidarity walk by using the security agencies to scuttle the event, noted that the task of delivering victory for the former Lagos state governor should be the collective work of all party members and willing residents.
He, however expressed optimism that the APC candidate would secure over 80 percent of votes in the state because of his track record, experience and capacity to offer dividends of democracy to all Nigerians when elected into office.
Ajibulu said, ” The truth of the matter is that, if you look at the federation and especially the South West, you will observe that it is only Ekiti that we are not seeing something serious being done for our presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, in the area of mobilization.
” As a strong party man who has been supporting the APC for years and Tinubu promoter, I was worried by this development. I engage some leaders on this issue and they all agreed that there is need for us to do something.
” In my own capacity, I organized over 100 support groups in the state and we met the leadership of the APC in the state under the chairmanship of Paul Omotosho of our determination to hold a solidarity walk for Tinubu in the state.
” They gave their consent and we started planning for the event and we fixed the date for January 6 , that was last week Friday. The party said any support group willing to work for Tinubu should pay N30,000 into the party’s account as registration, even though I protested against this, some groups paid this money ; I can say over 100 paid as directed by the party.
” I met with the governor, Biodun Oyebanji who was happy with the idea but asked us to liase with the party hierarchy in the state, which we did. I agreed to work with the APC leadership.We started our own planning since October and we carry the party.The party made us to shift tbecdates on many occasions but when we realise that ,they were foit dragging on the matter wedhad to fix January which the party also approved.
So, people contributed resources for the event and we got the approval of the security agencies for the date.
” Unfortunately, to our surprise, less than 24 hours to the planned rally, I received a call from the commissioner of police inviting us for an urgent meeting, only to get there and the CP said they received a letter from the state secretariat of the APC not to allow the rally, that we are faceless and planning to distrupt ongoing peace in the state.
” They equally sent out messages to people coming from the 16 Local Government Areas not to be part of it , threatening that if they attend, they should face the consequences of what will happen.
” Immediately, I tried reaching out to the party chairman, but sadly he declined all my calls and messages. We were confused on what to do to the extent that we contacted those we know in and outside Ekiti to help us, especially Abuja.
” On the day of the rally, as we gathered at the venue, we saw security officers taking over the place. We calm our people not to engage them in the interest of peace and we manage to move from the place.
” Don’t forget we still have a lot of PVCs uncollected in Ekiti state and we thought we could use the solidarity walk to educate the people on the need to take advantage of the period provided by INEC , and collect their cards in preparation for the election.
” I don’t know who is threatened by this move within APC, when it is obvious we are only interested in the success of the party and its candidate.”
While lamenting how some forces within the Ekiti APC frustrated last week’s planned solidarity walk for Tinubu, the APC chieftain said that there is need for the party hierarchy to step up mobilization for the APC candidates inorder achieve success in the state.