Last Saturday’s defection of a pro-All Progressives Congress (APC) group, Lagos4Lagos Movement to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Lagos State has initiated fresh crisis and permutation within the opposition party, New Telegraph can report. The former APC bloc joined the opposition party last Saturday in what they termed the new face of Lagos politics....CONTINUE READING
They insisted that they are joining forces with the PDP to wrestle power from the ruling APC. The group said its decision to join forces with PDP was after exhausting all options to make APC Caretaker/ Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC) address the anomalies in the aftermath of the congresses. And the Lead Visioner of the movement, Dr Abdulazeez Olajide Adediran, popularly known as ‘Jandor’, said he is joining the main opposition party in the state to pick the governorship ticket of the party in 2023.
He said he had done a wide consultation among group members, progressive governors in APC and also some key stakeholders, and the available option if the group wishes to appear on the ballot for the 2023 governorship election in Lagos is to jettison the APC platform. Adediran said: “We have seen that they (APC leadership) are not ready for anything. And for us, we have a vision and we are focused on it. We all saw what the PDP did during their congresses. They held a rancour-free congress from the ward, local government, state and as well as the national levels. “We are focused and we have the numbers.
We have weighed other options and we believe it is better we move our structure to a political party that equally has a structure. You know structure wins an election.” But New Telegraph learnt that many chieftains of PDP in the state are not happy with the movement of thegroupbecausemostof their leaders like Chief Bode George, Engr Deji Doherty among others were not consulted before the defection. Sources in Lagos PDP have expressed disappointment that the national organ of the party is forcing Adedi-ran and the group on the state chapter as it did in 2015 when it forced Jimi Agbaje on the party.
They warned that Adediran should not think that the Lagos PDP’s governorship ticket for the 2023 elections would be given on a platter of gold. According to one of the chieftains of the party, Dr Adetokunbo Pearse, the national organ would create more crises in the party by promising Adediran the governorship ticket of the party in 2023. He said: “It appears that the most important move that we saw came from the national but I was told a few months ago that Denrele Ogunsanya, who is like the guardian of this Lagos4Lagos have been talking to Atiku Abubakar of their group coming into PDP in Lagos.
“And then, the next thing we know was that High Chief Dokpesi with a delegation, which included Engineer Jide Adeniji, former director of FERMA, who works for Atiku in his campaign office and they went to see Jandor. We saw it in the papers and I myself was very close to the Atiku campaign, I was not consulted when they came here. “They probably suspected that I would not be very open to the move because I felt that if you want to do anything for Lagosians, you need to talk to those of us who are here. And then later on we saw Saraki. Now after all that has happened they are now reaching out to some of us because I know it was after that they went to see Chief Bode George.
They reached out to me and other leaders in the party. “You remember what happened in 2015 with Agbaje coming into the party and winning the ticket. If it was a free and fair election and he was able to get the delegations to support him, that’s fine but what we suspected happened in 2015 was that he was forced on the party and as soon as they did that the party divided into two. If this is not handled properly it will cause division in the party again. So, we are going to do our best to make sure that Jandor’s coming with thousands of people does not break up our party.”
