Former Lagos State governor and national leader of All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Bola Tinubu, has stated that Chief Tom Ikimi was not in the party for any altruistic reason was just a mole for the opposition People Democratic Party (PDP).
Tinubu was reacting to allegations made against him by Ikimi while giving reason why he left the party.
Bola Ahmed Tinubu
“He was never sincerely committed to the party. He was always playing out a PDP script. He only wanted the chairmanship of the party as a bargaining chip for negotiations with his benefactors. His defection purportedly on account of the loss of the chairmanship of the party is a mere subterfuge, once his ploy failed he had no other objective within the party, I knew he would go back to his sponsors. He is back in the company he deserves. And APC is better for it” Tinubu said in a statement he personally signed and made available to TheNiche on Tuesday.
He explained that ordinarily he would not have replied IKimi but decided to do so because of Ikimi’s antecedents in the public service where he made lying his hobby.
“Ordinarily I would not have responded to Tom Ikimi’s lengthy chronicle of falsehoods, cheap blackmail and abuse. My only reason for this response is that I know Tom Ikimi’s style. He subscribes to the view that no matter how unbelievable a lie may sound if you brazenly assert it and repeat it often enough you may persuade many that it is in fact true. I have seen Ikimi perpetrate this deviousness in his years in public life”, he said
He added that regarding Ikimi’s bid for the chairmanship of the APC, it was clear to practically everyone who had the interest of the party at heart that we simply could not have a man of Tom Ikimi’s antecedents as chairman of the party.
He said as national chairman of the defunct National Republican Convention (NRC) , one of the only two political parties in the country under the military transition programme, Tom Ikimi not only connived with the then military regime to annul the elections, terminate the democratic process and sell off his party.
“He became Abacha’s foreign minister, convincing the world that heinous state murders like the hanging of Ken Saro Wiwa were just acts! If Ikimi were the Chair of APC the party would have to sleep with both eyes open lest its chairman sell off the party before day break .No matter what anyone may say about me it is unlikely that I can be accused of supporting incompetent or morally light-weight individuals for important political positions. My philosophy is to put the best forward” he said.
He added “Who in their right mind would compare the highly principled Chief Bisi Akande, or Chief Oyegun with a Tom Ikimi? Either of these two men are known for their no-nonsense styles, not once in their careers would you hear that they betrayed a cause or were anybody’s stooge”.
Tnubu also accused Ikimi of concocting a story that he met the Minister of Petroleum, Mrs. Deziani Allison-Madueke, on the eve of party convention to discuss Deziani the Oando/ ConocoPhillips transaction.
“Only a Tom Ikimi can come up with the absurd falsehood that on the eve of the APC Convention when I was in crucial meetings practically round the clock I was meeting with the Minister for Petroleum! What exactly would have been the point of such a meeting especially on the eve of the Convention? Was it to prevent Tom Ikimi from emerging as Chairman of the APC? To what end? Of what value would it be to anyone except Ikimi himself? Besides if this was so why is he back to the same party that purportedly planned his down fall?”, he said.