APC Under You Conducted Nigeria’s Worst Primaries, Amosun Replies Oshiomhole
Former Governor of Ogun State, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, on Wednesday derided ex-National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Adams Oshiomhole who he claimed lied about the circumstances leading to his removal from office as the party chairman.
He said the party under Oshiomhole conducted one of the worst primaries in the history of Nigeria’s contemporary politics, hence his eventual removal from office.
While admonishing the erstwhile governor of Edo State to desist from denigrating former President Muhammadu Buhari to please the current administration of President Bola Tinubu, Amosun described him as the ‘biggest destructive threat’ to the existence of the APC during his tenure hence the need to remove him.
The former Ogun State governor made the statement in a press release issued to newsmen in Abuja on Wednesday.
His statement was a response to Oshiomhole’s claim that Buhari never intervened in the political crisis that led to his removal as the APC national chairman.
Oshiomhole spoke at the launch of a book “APC and Transition Politics” authored by and APC chieftain, Malam Salihu Lukman, in Abuja on Tuesday.
The senator representing Edo North accused Lukman as well as former Governor of Ekiti, Kayode Fayemi and his counterpart in Ogun as being the architects behind his controversial removal from office.
He lamented, “Lukman wrote several letters, dismissing my leadership without calling me. When you ride on the back of a tiger, there is only one destination. I wrote to the governors for a meeting. The governors said no, I should come to Imo House, not the APC office. He (pointing to Lukman) was there. He did not see anything wrong with that.
“It felt as though I was in a military barrack. But I told them none of you can lecture me about the power of a governor because I have been governor twice. Eight years uninterrupted. At a point, I told Fayemi, ‘You did a resit. You were elected and by the second term, you lost. That means you failed’. I did not do a resit, and you are lecturing me about power. I can mention some of them.
“The man in Ogun State (Amosun), he told me if not for the President, he would have left the party. Some of them told me ‘You are working for your paymaster in Lagos. Your paymaster in Bourdillon.’”
Midway into his speech, Oshiomhole turned to warn the current National Chairman of the party, Dr Abdullahi Ganduje to be prepared if he doesn’t want the APC governors to pull the same political intrigue against his leadership.
“Mr Chairman, sir, if you have not faced it already, you will face it. The only difference is if the President decides to intervene and moderate. In my own case, we have a President who was not ready to intervene,” he said.
Reacting, Amosun said it was obvious Oshiomhole was merely trying to warm himself into the good book of Tinubu by dragging the name of Buhari into his drama.
This was even as he described the narrative of the Edo senator as a pack of falsehood peddled to amuse the Nigerian public in vain.
