Prince Sunday Fagbemi said Governor Abdulrazaq had performed creditably enough to earn votes for a second term of office.
By Jeffrey Agbo
Kwara State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has dismissed threats of the weight of the opposition parties in the forthcoming governorship election and assured people of the state of greater dividends of democracy if the incumbent governor, Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq, is re-elected.
Addressing journalists on Thursday at the party’s secretariat in Ilorin, chairman of the party, Prince Sunday Fagbemi, said the governor had performed creditably enough to earn votes for a second term of office and assured that the governor would improve on his performance if he runs the second term.
He said that the party was intact in the state, adding that the Minister of Information and Culture Lai Mohammed, who is a chieftain of the party, was firmly within the fold of the party contrary to beliefs in some quarters that he is not wholeheartedly in the party.
Also speaking, the director-general of the campaign council, Yahaya Seriki, said the defection of some of the chieftains of the party to another party would have no negative effect on the chances of the governor at the poll.
He said the defectors, who are now governorship candidates or candidates for other posts in other parties, left APC because of vested interest and asserted that the defectors knew within themselves that they would not excel at the poll.
“If you could recall, I was director-general of the APC campaign council in the Kwara Central senatorial district in 2018/2019 general elections. Many of these people that decamped from APC didn’t participate in the election campaign then. You see, all these people in the YPP, SDP…. we’re part of one big family and are related one way or the other,” he said.
“In 2019, I approached about 13 governorship aspirants then on the need to present one person among all of us as the party’s governorship candidate. The major reason they are not in APC today is because of their personal interest or expectations which according to them might not have been met. My own interest is to see a better Kwara State. If they believe in the growth of the state, they would not have left the party. Kwara is bigger than anybody. Leaving the party, to me, is out of personal interest and not that of the state.
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“Their departure from the party would not affect the chances of the governor in his bid for re-election. They also know they are going nowhere leaving the party. They were probably looking for ways to see us come and meet with them, which we have already started. By the special grace of God, the governorship candidates of the YPP, SDP, even PDP; we are together.
“Don’t be surprised to hear and see tomorrow the PDP governorship candidate, Alhaji Shuaib Yaman Abdulahi, saying that because of Ambassador Yahaya Seriki, he is supporting Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq re-election bid come 2023.”
In her own speech, the spokesperson of the campaign council, Florence Oyeyemi, said, in like manner, that the governor achieved a lot and deserves to be re-elected to continue his work.
She said the governor was determined to record greater achievement if he is voted for a second term.
Oyeyemi, who doubles as the Commissioner for Finance in the state, urged people of the state not to be swayed by what he called misleading claims of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state that the governor was mismanaging the bond obtained for execution of projects in the state.
She stated: “The PDP is just trying to put the public in the dark about the finances of the state as concerning the bond the government took. We moved from the 20th position in the fiscal sustainability index in 2018 to the 8th position now. That shows how we manage the bond and the finances. We have moved from the past where loans are taken without projects but only the projects that are not self-sustaining. We went through a proper feasibility study before embarking on our projects, the innovation hub, garment-making factory and visual art centres. They are projects that we move the state to a more viable level.”
