Kwara LG Primary: APC Reacts to Chief Iyiola Oyedepo’s allegations
1. The Electoral Committee of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Kwara State, notes with disappointment the fact-free outbursts published by one of our leaders, Akogun Iyiola Oyedepo, on the just- concluded primaries for the election of the party’s flag bearers in the forthcoming local government elections in Kwara State.
2. As a leader in his own right who should be versed in democratic traditions, Chief Oyedepo ought to know the media is not the first place to go to ventilate his frustrations with the party or the leadership. Whatever grievances he may have could easily have been channelled through the established channels including the appeal committee.
3. The primary elections apparently didn’t go Chief Oyedepo ‘s way in his Isin Local Government, but the outcome definitely reflects the wishes of the majority of APC members who participated in it. Chief Oyedepo’s annointed aspirant, Mr. Adeboye Adebayo, ran a good race. He was not victorious, but it is not the end of the world for the retired banker. We also do not think that Chief Oyedepo ought to rubbish the whole process simply because his candidate did not make it this time. That is the nature of party politics and democracy.
4. While we do not shut out the room for improvement, the free and fair nature of the election and the outcome were not limited to Chief Oyedepo ‘s home front. A similar commendable level of electoral transparency and an outcome reflecting the wishes of the APC members occurred across Akogun’s Kwara South Constituency and beyond. In Chief Oyedepo ‘s catchment areas of Isin, Irepodun, Oke Ero, Ekiti, Oyun, Ifelodun, and Offa Local Government Areas, congresses took place and candidates who emerged winners were announced by the party. The Stakeholders who are no less credentialed in democratic practices than Chief Oyedepo would bear testimony to the transparency of the electoral process and an agreeable outcome in their domains.
5. In Offa Local Government, for instance, the emergence of the chairmanship candidate through a democratic process can be confirmed from the major stakeholders, including Chief GG Jaiyeola, Hajia Fareedah Dankaka, Alh. Jani Ibrahim, Rtd Colonel Ademola Lawal, Hon. Hassan Oyeleke, Barr. Segun Olawoyin, the two members in Kwara House of Assembly ( Hon. JK and Hon. Gbenga Ogunniyi Adato), and a host of others.
6. It is unfair, if not cheap blackmail, for one stakeholder to surreptitiously berate other stakeholders in a publication lacking in facts and laced with malice against the leadership. As leaders, we can disagree on political choices within the party, but we should be restrained in discrediting the leadership and others that we disagree with.
7. The party members made their choices, and the party leadership upheld those choices. That is democracy at work. This, of course, does not foreclose continuous and healthy conversations on possible improvements in our democratic processes.
Oloriewe Raheem Adedoyin,
Chairman, Publicity Committee,
APC Electoral Committee,
Kwara State.
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Akogun Iyiola Oyedepo’s Observation in on the LG Primaries in Kwara
*Candidates fielded by Gov Abdulrahaman for APC in the coming LG elections in Kwara cannot be useful for their People – APC Chieftain , Akogun Oyedepo*
Popular Political activist and senior member of APC in Kwara, Bar Akogun Iyiola Oyedepo has voiced out condemnation of the process of APC primary elections and the candidates produced under the fraudulent primary , declaring that all candidates that emerged under APC came as products of imposition by Governor Abdulrahaman Abdulrazaq.
The Isanlu isin born APC chieftain also declared that all the candidates APC fielded cannot be useful to the people of their various local government areas since they are product of shambolic primaries .
The articles read
“There is nothing inspiring about Local Government administration and elections in Kwara State. Everything is about fraud and impunity in the destruction of our values. When you think people in political office have exhausted all their tricks, they invent new ones. Perhaps they do not know the meaning of democracy as they were never socialized into it. Their standard behavior is this ceaseless violation of democratic principles.”
“Six years running and government at the local level is run from the state. Where local councils were not governed by civil servants, they are run by the appointees of the governor. Whoever is in charge of Kwara Councils since 2019 is the man Friday of the Governor of Kwara.”
“On assumption of office, the then existing elected council was illegally dissolved. The then KWASIEC was dissolved and the stage was well set for the pillage of the fund of the sixteen LGAs.”
“After much pressure our Party APC agreed to conduct council elections in September, 2024. I never thought there could ever be a free, fair and transparent primary in APC Kwara under the watch of our “leader”. And I told people that if the primary was credible, I would be disappointed. I was talking from the benefits of experience, hindsight and antecedents.”
“When the Party told us to go for direct primaries, I thought the leopard had finally changed its skin. But I was wrong. The primary election was conducted on Tuesday 2nd July 2024 and the result came out on Monday 8th of July-seven days after the conduct of the election! The result came without the figures scored by contestants. This really is democracy, Kwara special brand. The precedent of this was the gubernatorial direct primary of 2018. The primary produced the winner but no figure for others.”
“A cursory look at the candidates approved by the leader who is a one man democracy, are those that will be useful not to the people of various local government areas”
Another shameful aspect of the results was the appearance of candidates who did not even contest in the race.
May God help us.
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