The feud currently playing out between Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, was long overdue, an elder statesman, Alhaji Tanko Yakasai, said on Monday.
Tinubu, who is regarded as “national leader” of the governing APC, at the weekend, authored a statement rebuking the party’s national chairman over his handling of the controversial Ondo State governorship primary, calling for Oyegun’s resignation.
It is not immediately clear if Mr. Oyegun will heed the former Lagos governor’s call to resign, but over 48hours after Tinubu issued the statement, the APC chairman is yet to react to some of the damning allegations leveled against him by the party’s national leader.
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In his reaction, Yakasai said the misunderstanding did not come as a surprise to keen political observers, pointing out that people like him had anticipated the crisis soon after the formation of the present government.
He said: “APC is an amalgamation of four to five political groups. After the formation of the government, only members of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) were being considered for political patronage, while members of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), and the main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have been sidelined”.
Yakasai added that members of the defunct All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) “are neither here nor there” in spite of the appointment of the erstwhile party’s former national chairman, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, as a minister.
“The ACN leader, Asiwaju Tinubu, is totally out of the picture despite the fact that the vice president (Yemi Osinbajo) is his nominee. The appointment of Fashola to the jumbo ministry is considered personal, just like that of Amaechi. Bukola’s emergence as Senate president was largely due to his personal financial prowess and the support he received from the PDP members in the Senate”, he noted.
The elder statesman further said that prior to the economic crises the country was plunged into, Osinbajo was “a mere onlooker” in the current government, as according to him, the vice president’s new found relevance was made possible by his position as the chairman of the National Economic Council, which conferred on him the position of the chairman of the Economic Team of the government.