By Razaq Adedeji Jimoh, Toyo C. Ngerm & Mariam Balogun
The photo above is the cover of a July edition date of the mainstream version of the Civics Weekly, which in theme, described the party primary elections as a "Season of Black Market". In fundamental context, the story queried if Alimosho progressives would get it right this time, given the conventional condemnation of serial set of the Party Candidates they have always put forward as unperforming without exception so far. Few weeks down the line after conclusion of the primary elections, a new twist to the whole scenario began to emerge.
The matters of Alimosho’s seat in the House of Representatives would seem to be one bedeviled with recurrent controversy in every election cycle. This time around, two events in sequence made the contents of the convention. The first was about the looming fear of some concerned members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) that the party may lose the right to field a valid candidate in the coming 2023 general election. the second came as a curious question yet with elusive answer as to who is actually the APC candidate for the Alimosho House of Representatives in the coming 2023 general elections? The Progressives party has been divinely lucky to be consistent in producing the representatives for the Local Government’s Federal Constituency seat in the National Assembly.
Hitherto, the recurring controversy had always been how Alimosho, often prided as the largest local government in Nigeria, lost the opportunity of having two seats in the House of Representatives under a circumstance alleged to be an underground tradeoff between then serving local government chairman and the Lagos Island that eventually became the beneficiary. The only time this issue of alleged trade off of opportunity got a reprieve was in 2011 election when the relatively sleepy Oki community in Iyana Ipaja area produced both the candidates of the progressives, then Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in person of Hon Solomon Olamilekan Adeola and the People Democratic Party (PDP’s) in person of Hon Segun Adewale (aka Aeroland).
The raging concern this time has it that the party’s internal wrangling as the outcome of May 27th House of Representatives’ Primary election, which eventually found its way to the court through some aggrieved aspirants, might be one serious undoing of the party leadership that failed to act decisively before things get out of hand.
Those with insider privilege to know the fact about the primary election that was supposed to produce the candidate have the fears that those aspirants that went to court had sufficient good grounds to get the court’s approval to nullify the election and stop the party from fielding Mr. Ganiyu Ayuba (aka Mayor KK) as the party’s candidate.
To the knowledge of
Civics Weekly, only one aspirant, Alhaji Semiu Onifade, was known to have gone to court to challenge the election. There were hearsays that another aspirant also went to court. But that remains in the realm of unsubstantiated rumour to this magazine as efforts to verify it from the concerned aspirants proved abortive.
In his grounds for filling the case before the Federal High Court, Hon Onifade alleged that his name was maliciously excluded from the list of aspirants due for the May 27th election, despite obtaining the N10 million Expression of Interest (EOI) Form and duly screened, cleared, to participate in the election by the National Organ of the party.
His Affidavit and Originating Summons, a copy of which was obtained by this magazine partly reads:
“That the primary election held on the 27th of May, 2022 resulted in violence and two lives of some supporters were lost in the melee, hence the election was cancelled and the appropriate authorities, which include the party leadership, INEC representatives and the security agencies promise(sic) to inform candidates of the rescheduled primary election.
“That while I was awaiting information as to the day, date, time and venue for the rescheduled primary election from the concerned authorities, the information I got instead was a result of a primary election already conducted on the 30th May, 2022.
“That the purported primary election was deliberately skewed in favour of Ganiyu Ayuba, a preferred candidate over and above others.
Political observers that have been in tune with the trend of court decisions on such election matters feared that the candidature of Hon Ayuba could be on shaky ground and could be nullified and possibly come at a time that might be too late for the party to remedy the situation in line with the 2022 election law.
In the light of this ugly development, some concerned party members began to agitate for the cancellation of the aggrieved aspirants and the candidate in favour of the incumbent member of the House, Hon Olufemi Adebanjo (aka Eyes Open). As they argued, “since the primary election that produced the embattled party candidate was never transparent either, it was better to sacrifice his undeserving and fraudulently procured mandate than for the APC to lose the opportunity to file a candidate for the Abuja seat”.
Somehow, however, through what the learned community would describe as technicality, the court dismissed Onifade’s case. One of the grounds for dismissal of the case, as we gathered, was that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) denied witnessing any primary election for the Alimosho House of Representatives while the party complementarily argued that consensus was eventually adopted in deciding who emerged as candidate, following the crisis that marred the originally scheduled election. The court, having cited a plethora of precedent decisions of the Supreme Court, concluded on the case to be an internal affair of the party, which the court lacked any jurisdiction to preside over.
But the aspirant told this magazine that he had headed to the Appeal Court. This presupposes that coast remains cloudy about the possibility of Alimosho APC to continue the tradition of producing the Alimosho representative for the House of Representatives.
Soon afterwards, nevertheless, a new twist to the whole scenario began to surface in the recent time. Following the presumed closing date all political parties had to submit the list of their candidates for all public offices to the INEC and thence deemed unchangeable, the camp of incumbent representative, Hon Adebanjo, went into wide jubilation for being the eventual party candidate for the election. While it could have thrown the camp of Ayuba into confusion, it nevertheless continued to claim that the candidature of Ayuba borne out of the controversial primary election remained intact.
In spite of this ground standing, there were indications that the leadership of the camp that produced Ayuba, led by Alhaji Abdulallhi Enilolobo, has remained unsettled in quests for the true position of things. Perhaps, what may come to imply that Hon Adebanjo may have made the INEC list could be found in a missive supposedly released by one Com. Okedara Kolawole in canvassing the inevitability of fielding Ayuba as the rightful candidate. Pushing the issue with Awori tribal sentiment, the writer threatens that any candidate that is not Ayuba “will be unacceptable”.
In the piece, where the title literally reflects a seeming call to uprising against the party as
Alimosho wake up, it’s time to change the ugly narrative if APC present(sic) a failure to represent Alimosho at House of Reps, it partly reads: “We should all stand for what is right… We’ve demanded for an Awori and a son of the soil to represent us since the creation of Alimosho Local Government and our Leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, have(sic) keyed into it”.
He also argued further that members of the party “have been insulted and disgraced by the performance of Hon Adebanjo (aka Eyes Open)”.
Not long after, a report which this magazine could not confirm before the press, had it that amidst the confusion, Alhaji Enilolobo, through the complimentary efforts of Senator Solomon Adeola (Lagos West) had besieged Asiwaju Tinubu to explain why his camp owned the slot of House of Representatives as the consensus reached by the party on May 30th, following the crisis that rocked the May 27th primary election. It was further gathered that Asiwaju made efforts to explain why Hon Adebanjo should be the right candidate on ground of legislative experience hands he would need as President. But Enilolobo purportedly remained uncompromising. Asiwaju was said to have eventually dismissed further discussion of the issue on the ground that he knew nothing about it; that it was between the National Organ of the party and the National Assembly. He was also said to have made them understand that he was also a party candidate and the person they could approach for such matter was Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt Hon Femi Gbajabiamila.
Another report, which this magazine was able to confirm also had it that still in their quest for the true position of things, the Enilolobo camp was said to have raised emissary to seek a way of opening channels of reconciliation with the new representative of Alimosho at the state level, chief Sunday Babatunde Aboyade. With this approach, according to sources, the emissary had the privilege to know that the state leadership had no bearing with any emerging news about any change of party candidate either as a rumour or fact, as far as Alimosho is concerned.
However, while the issue remained cloudy, there are two questions Civics Weekly, could identify to make the coast the coast clearer. The one is who is the authentic APC candidate for the House of Reps? The answer remains in the realm of INEC finalist that the members would have to await as due in a short while. The other is: which of the candidates the party members are really clamouring for to represent the party? The answer falls within the realm of this magazine’s independent investigations.
From the findings, the opposing opinions argued that the Comrade Okedara’s piece could as well be a “wishful and willing” resort to pushing out false narrative in grovel for “underserving empathy” before the party leadership at the state level.
A member who simply identified himself as Adekunle said: “We members of the Alimosho Progressives simply need an end to the ‘chop-alone’ syndrome that has become the undoing of a person who calls himself the ‘Apex leader’. Likewise, a party chieftain who spoke in confidentiality said it is a matter of choice between two evils. “You will not understand”, he said.
But going further to explain his parable in full after this reporter so urged him, he said: “The crux of the matter can be likened to this: Hon Ayuba is just about to wear the evil gown that Hon Adebanjo had just pulled off after he realized that he had been in bondage of a local god who has charmed him for over seven years. So, you can imagine the enormity of our problem! The evil that someone rejected is trying to use another proxy to replace the one he had just lost.
“the implication is that now that Eyes Open is going to the Reps on ground of the merit of his experience, he will know that it is the party members he is directly responsible to. That will be a break from the past”.
In expansion of this view,
Civics Weekly gathered that no member of the House of Reps from Alimosho had ever made a good record of representation in the perspective of the party faithful. They are always deemed to be nonperforming. The reason, according to many of them, is that they have never been benefitting from all honourable.
Thus a member said: “What is happening now is God’s fight for the poor party members. The last time we had such experience was in the 2011 election when Hon. Solomon Olamilekan almost lost his bid for the second term. That was when he realised that he had not been in touch with the people of his constituency – Alimosho – despite giving much returns back home. It was then revealed that he had been making efforts to cater to the welfare of party members, but his messages were not reaching them. He quickly changed tactics when God intervened for him to go the second term.
“At the time of Hon Olaitan (aka Gobbi), it was the same lamentation for the party members, but we thought it was Afenifere’s conflict with Asiwaju that caused that. But the trend continued at the time Papa Adedeji took over; that for eight years he represented Alimosho, party members kept lamenting.
“When Hon Adebanjo took over from Hon Olamilekan (now Senator Adeola), it had never been a good story either. The saving grace for him now is that all party members, including the Okedara man you mentioned, know where the problem lies. The honourables are not the problem. The problem is the ‘god’ in Arida that always put them in bondage. And now, between the Eyes Open that has loosened himself from the bondage and the KK Ayuba that is replacing him in the bondage, which would you think Alimosho people should be agitating for?”
Definitely, this answer is not for Civics Weekly to answer. It is left for the Alimosho people and the INEC to decide at their respective due time.
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