EXCLUSIVE: After Court defeat, How Lai Mohammed instigated thugs to disrupt APC stakeholders meeting in Ilorin
It is no longer news that the Kwara state chapter of the All Progressives Congress has a new Caretaker Chairman since the removal of the former state Caretaker Chairman of the party, Hon. Bashir Omolaja Bolarinwa was announced a couple of weeks ago. All efforts by the party’s top hierarchies in Abuja to resolve the differences among the stakeholders have been stalled, a development that has thrown the supporters of the Minister of Information and Culture into disarray but not without some machineries working against the unity of the party.
To douse the tension among the warring factions in the state, the National Caretaker Chairman, Governor Mai Mala Buni of Yobe state waded in to resolve the crisis and directed that the North Central zonal leadership, led by Niger state governor, Alhaji Abubakar Sani Bello resolve the lingering intra party crisis. A new Caretaker Committee Chairman, Abdullahi Samari was announced afterwards after efforts by the Lai Mohammed led faction to reinstate the erstwhile Caretaker Chairman hit rock-bottom.
Ahead of the ongoing nationwide revalidation and registration exercise of the party, its national leadership after dispatching representatives to the thirty-six states of the federation including the Federal Capital Territory to deliver registration materials and coordinate the registration exercise called on Nigerians to join the party while urging its members to conduct themselves peacefully during and after the exercise. The party’s representatives in the state in fulfilling all righteousness and in accordance with its guiding principles, had extended invitations to all relevant stakeholders across the state for a meeting before the formal commencement of the revalidation and registration exercise.
This medium can authoritatively confirm that Alhaji Lai Mohammed who solely appointed the embattled BOB used his networks within the party to ensure that his man remained the party’s chairman in the state. All efforts to save his protégé from going down was to no avail as the new party chairman received the registration materials and the delegates from the party Secretariat in Abuja, an event that spelt an end to who the authentic Caretaker Chairman is.
Like the last kick of a dying horse, the Honourable Minister for Information and Culture wouldn’t budge on his decision to own the party in the state and as such approached a court in Abuja challenging Hon. Bashir Omolaja Bolarinwa’s removal as the Caretaker Chairman and also stop the registration from taking place in Kwara but the court outrightly threw out the case for lack of merit. This threw the Minister off-balance, finding it hard to believe that he was going to lose control of the party that was in his grip only a few years ago.
And a day to the stakeholders meeting, which was scheduled for 3rd of February, 2021, Lai Mohammed in one last frantic effort to actualise his inordinate ambition to control the party in the state, sneaked into Ilorin the state capital in the wee hours of Tuesday, 2nd February having perfected all arrangements to resort to violence and disrupt the revalidation exercise. The Minister, not short of contacts that will easily assemble a group of thugs gave out one Million Naira to mobilise political thugs from within Ilorin with the sole intent of disrupting the exercise and blame it on the governor to have attacked BOB and his supporters. As expected the skirmishes that ensued during the meeting has been blamed on none other than the governor, exonerating themselves of any blame while Lai Mohammed secretly fled to Oro in Irepodun local government area of the state.
