By Jimoh Sulyman
Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq of Kwara State has been cautioned to desist from the act of ingratitude and give honour to whom honour is due as the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed is his benefactor and not somebody the governor should get at.
This was contained in a press conference addressed by the Deputy Chairman of Kwara State All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Sunday Oyebiyi in Ilorin, the State capital, yesterday.
Chief Oyebiyi disclosed that facts remain there that the credit of the party’s resounding victory at the 2019 general elections goes to Alhaji Lai Mohammed and other stakeholders.
According to him, the Minister sourced and disbursed funds for election campaign and logistics, saying Lai Mohammed did as party leader all that was expected and required for the party to win elections; surprisingly, “the then gubernatorial candidate, Mallam AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, who was being assisted contributed nothing to the campaign funds which himself had earlier acknowledged”., Oyebiyi said.
He disclosed that the party received no kobo as campaign fund from anybody other than Alhaji Lai Mohammed contrary to the governor’s blackmail, adding that “other stakeholders assisted the candidate in their own way and not through the party”.
“Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq’s low self esteem and lack of intellectualism hinder him from flowing with decent and experienced people around him”, he said.
The deputy chairman, challenged the governor to account for One Billion Naira campaign grants he collected from the party’s National Headquarters. According to him, the governor is supposed to be robed with garment of dishonest instead of finding faults.
“From horse’s mouth, Governor AbdulRazaq had shot himself in the leg about his loyalty and allegiance to APC manifestoes when he shredded the document as “useless” and declared it a mere waste basket material”, Oyebiyi said.
He said they are not surprised by the governor’s confessional statement on his abandonment of the party manifestoes, as according to him, that was the same manner he left the party in 2019 shortly after becoming the candidate.
“After constituting two different committees on his governorship campaign elections, he abandoned the party to financial harmattan, which forced the party to appeal to the Honourable Minister for a bailout that he took with sense of responsibility and diligence,” he disclosed.
Chief Oyebiyi who was surprised at the governor’s claim that he won his ticket and election on his personal and family political profile, said it is a “lie from the pit of hell”.
Chief Oyebiyi asked the governor, “Of what political relevance was his father in Kwara State”. The father contested and lost governorship election in 1979; his mother contested and lost councillorship election in Magaji Ngeri Ward of Ilorin; the elder brother, Alimi contested for governorship and lost; his younger brother, Baba Razak contested and lost House of Representatives election here in Ilorin, saying AA himself attempted to become a Senator and governor several times which turned him to a political harlot.
He called on the National Secretariat of the APC to be at alert as the Governor is a political liability and “dangerously navigating the party back to Egypt instead of the promised land that the O to ge revolution had in store for Kwarans”.
“The governor had contradicted himself on the question of merit in recruiting a few teachers; why did he fail to apply the same standard in appointing his commissioners that he had publicly admitted to have contained only one “experienced” member”, he said.
