Ex-LP chair: Rhodes-Vivour’s victory would have set back Lagos progress by 10 years

Kayode Salako, former chairman of the Labour Party (LP) in Lagos state, says Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, the party’s flagbearer ignored elders in the build-up to the March 18 guber poll.

Salako in a post on Sunday on his official Facebook page said he handed the party’s governorship ticket to  Rhodes-Vivour “free of charge”.

He said the LP candidate after getting the ticket “started making moves to push him aside”.

Salako said an aspirant offered him N30 million and a brand new car to help him get the governorship ticket but turned down the offer and insisted on Rhodes-Vivour.

The ex-Lagos LP chairman added that he once reported Rhodes-Vivour to the party’s elders.

“Because, I reported the governorship candidate to the leaders in the party to tell him to do the right thing with the party, which he never did. All I was asking him to do was to do the right thing with the party so that the party also can do the right thing with his project,” Salako said.

“He told all of us to our faces that he didn’t trust us. He said we should stay away from his project. He said he had his own people he wanted to use to run his election, and we all simply obeyed.

“He didn’t want to be a ‘godson’ to Salako, his state chairman, but all along, Chief Bode George, the leader of the PDP in the state, and his wife were all he was listening to and not anybody else in the Labour Party in the state.

“So, he preferred to be a godson to a PDP leader as a Labour Party member and governorship candidate but told the State Chairman, who fought so hard for him to get the ticket to go to blazes.

“He was never Labour Party inclined at all from his operations, but purely PDP. He was just doing whatever he liked at the party, and not listening to anybody.

“He ran his election alone, without the involvement of many of the prominent political stakeholders in our party, and God almighty simply corrected the mistake I made by working so hard, and by forcing almost all the powers that be in our party — both in Lagos and Abuja — for him to get the ticket to be the governorship candidate of our party.

“When Labour Party won the presidential election in Lagos State on February 25, all of us in the party were committedly and passionately involved.

“But, on March 18, it was more of only him; his Endsars/few Obidient people and the emergency friends he imported from abroad at the tale end of the project.

“With what I know about him, he would have simply come to mess up Lagos and set its progress 10 years behind.

“I could remember that one of the aspirants offered to give me 30 million naira and a brand new Jeep car for him to get the ticket, during the period of the substitution of the primary election.

“I refused and insisted on him because I thought the only way my party could win Lagos was to use a youth/or a middle-aged person, who could be so attractive enough to the electorate in the state.

“Ask any real member of the party, who worked closely with him, during the campaign period, he would tell you the story of how he ran it so authoritatively, shabbily, stingingly, self-centeredly, arrogantly, and unculturedly like a sadist and a school boy in politics.

“I made the mistake, by working passionately to give his type the governorship ticket, but God corrected the mistake in his own divine way on March 18.

“It is he, himself, who told many of us with his strange character and guts, not to bother working, or voting for him, and we simply complied.”

Meanwhile, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, in a post on his official Twitter handle on Tuesday said he would not respond to Salako’s comments.

“I am very empathetic when it comes to mental health conditions and I do take it very seriously. As a result, I will not be responding to Kayode Salako because I know for a fact that he is Bi-Polar. Sadly, this condition is used by others to manipulate him for political gain. I wish him well and hope he gets the medical attention he needs,” Rhodes Vivour said.