APC: What Amosun wants is not in our constitution

The All Progressives Congress (APC) says Ibikunle Amosun, governor of Ogun state, resorted to self-help which is alien to its constitution.

Lanre Issa-Onilu, spokesperson of the ruling party, said this in reaction to the crisis trailing the party in Ogun state.

Amosun had kicked against the emergence of Dapo Abiodun as the governorship candidate for 2019, saying Abiodun Akinlade, his preferred candidate, is the people’s choice.

Addressing journalists on Wednesday at the APC national secretariat in Abuja, Issa-Onilu accused the governor of handpicking candidates for the party without due process.

He said though the governor took some monarchs in the state to see President Muhammadu Buhari, he should know that the president will ask for the rules to be followed.

“It is a straight forward case. If we speak to the merit of this case, the whole world saw it; the visuals were everywhere, where the Ogun state governor gathered some aspirants, stakeholders and said clearly, there won’t be primaries and right there he pointed at who the next governor, senator, house of representatives candidates would be. He named himself the next senatorial candidate,” he said.

“In the case of Ogun, after that exercise failed after they tried to handpick who will be what, they sent a letter that they have agreed on direct primary and the party has no choice than to endorse what you want.

“On the day they all came for screening including the governor, he suddenly left with other aspirants and returned back to Abeokuta, gathered some people and sent back to the NWC that they wanted indirect primary and the other aspirants said we were all here together, that they didn’t know when this change was made.

“So, whatever the governor did was self-help and there is no provision for self help in the party’s constitution. Eventually, the NWC panel that was constituted to conduct the primary went to Abeokuta and did the primary. The governor’s preferred candidate chose not to participate in that exercise. So the party stands by the result of that primary it conducted in Ogun state.

“Secondly, he took some monarchs to meet the president. I am surprised because someone like him, with due respect to him should have understood the nature of the president we have, that no matter how close you are to him, he will listen to you but he will ask for the rules to be followed.

“So, the next thing we had was he looking for who to blame, and Bola Tinubu and Segun Osoba readily came to his mind and he blamed them for that. The question to ask is whether they were the one who gave directive to him to organise his own primaries or they were the one who instructed him not to participate in the primaries or his candidate not to participate in primaries the party organised.

“Have I done the right thing? Am I asking for what is fair? Am I not putting the party in a position to ask them to do what’s wrong? Those are the questions we expect governor of Ogun state to ask himself. He needs to self appraise, look at the actions he has taken and come to that conclusions that he’s taking the wrong route.”