By Chuks Ehirim Assistant Editor, North
Allegations of financial sleaze are swirling around the All Progressives Congress (APC), casting a smear on the resolve of President Muhammadu Buhari to stamp out corruption, which critics already knock as partisan.
Penultimate week, Bayelsa APC Chairman, Timipa Orunimighe, alleged that Minister of State for Agriculture, Heineken Lokpobori, paid “a huge sum of money” to get the slot, allegedly from former Governor Timipre Sylva.
Shortly after the allegation, Orunimighe was sacked as the party’s chairman by his executives. Those who plotted the coup appointed Joseph Fasi as chairman.
They alleged that Orunimighe and APC Deputy National Publicity Secretary, Timi Frank, were moles planted in the APC by Governor Seriake Dickson to weaken the party.
Dickson is of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The executive led by Fasi seems to have got the endorsement of the party’s national leadership.
On April 7, he visited the APC national secretariat in Abuja to consolidate his position and scoffed at the allegation that Lokpobiri bought his job from Sylva.
He said his executive has suspended Orunimighe and Frank from the party.
But Orunimighe insisted that Lokpobiri must resign as minister because it was fraudulently acquired.
“Why we are standing here before you today is because of the appointments that we feel were supposed to be given to those of us of the APC in Bayelsa,” he explained.
“It is a pity to say that somebody like Timipre Sylva who was supposed to be the leader of the party, today turns against the party and sold our party slots for whatever he feels may be money or whatever he feels that our party slots can be sold for.
“As APC chairman in Bayelsa and very strong exco, we have spoken with him, we told him we will stand against that as a people.
“If we can stand against [Goodluck] Jonathan as president, if we can stand against the Governor of Bayelsa State, Sariake Dickson, to tell him we don’t like his antecedents as governor, we can also tell our leader that we don’t like his antecedents.
“We are not ready as a people to sell any slot of appointment to be given to Bayelsans.
“Some of us have been arrested before for what we believe in. We have being to cell for what we believed in and we will stand also to defend what we have believed in.”
Orunimighe urged Buhari and APC national leaders “to be aware that … we will not accept this, but we are not into war with anybody; we want a very peaceful atmosphere where we can dialogue and bring quality and qualified Bayelsa APC members to serve in those places the government would deem fit for Bayelsa.”
Frank, who is also not in a cordial relationship with the national leadership (the party has refused to recognise him as its spokesman), asked the leadership to suspend and investigate Sylva.
“I am going to conduct my own investigation” and “I’m going to officially write to the president” to intervene.
“If Lokpobori did pay bribe to get the job, he will be asked to resign”, Frank pledged.