By Mumini AbdulKareem
The leadership crisis rocking the Kwara State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is responsible for the inability of President Muhammadu Buhari to visit Kwara State,National Pilotย gathered, last night.
The President is now billed to visit the state on Tuesday February 12, 2019, two days to the expiration of campaign activities after earlier postponements.
Recall that some top security sources in the state had attributed the failure of the president to visit Kwara to the last violent attack in Agbaji, the ancestral home of the Senate President in order not to exacerbate political tension in the state.
There was however two different positions advanced by top inside sources within the APC last night as reasons for the postponement.
A member of one of the committees recently set up by the party for the 2019 election told this reporter that the need to reconcile feuding parties within the APC had been responsible for the postponement adding that it was the leadership that requested the president to tarry awhile in for its house to be put in order.
โโThe earlier visit was postponed because the party leaders wanted to reconcile all the feuding parties and engage all the factions so that when the president comes, we will have a unified front.
โYou know Buhari had earlier reconciled all of them especially the aggrieved gubernatorial aspirants and at several instances, they have also met the representatives of the president towards ensuring unity before the election.
โIt was the leaders in the state who requested for the shift of the visit earlier and the unity has been achieved now before the new date was arrived at,โ the source said.
Also, another top member of the party who spoke on the issue last night said the different dates for the visit that were earlier bandied around did not emanate from the presidential campaign council.
โWe cannot say heโs coming on January 4th, 2019 when those of us that will receive him are not ready. Itโs not a question of anything extraordinary. He will move to Ogun same day after the Kwara visit where he will close his campaign. We are (now) ready to receive him. There are still many states that he is yet to visit where there is no so-called crisisโ, he added.
But other party sources said the president was being circumspect about the factional crisis between the two factions of the APC in the state.
According to the source, though the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has published the list of the candidates related to the Bolarinwa-led faction, the President is being careful not to be seen as supporting a faction in flagrant disobedient to the existing court judgement on the issue.
โThe Presidentโs visit is coming up on the 12th of February, 2019 while the case is slated for 11th, a day before. It is hope that things would have been sorted out before the visit of the president with this development.โ
