The internal crisis plaguing the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Kogi State assumed a different dimension yesterday with the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP, formally distancing itself from repeated insinuations of a certain ‘working relationship’ with Governor Yahaya Bello.
The opposition party said it viewed “the PDP tag” earlier ascribed to the governor, by the leadership of his party, the APC as strange and unacceptable.
The PDP in a statement by its Publicity Secretary in Kogi State, Bode Ogunmola, dismissed as “absolutely false, totally presumptuous and comprehensively baseless”, the allegations that all 45 appointments so far made by Bello went to PDP members.
The former ruling party noted that ” though the crisis and burden of identity plaguing the incumbent APC government in Kogi State, is deserving of genuine public sympathy, the APC alone has the responsibility of bearing the burden of its disunity and disjointedness.’
According to the statement, “What amuses more is the claim that Yahaya Bello has returned power to the PDP through the appointment of PDP members. Nothing can be farther from the truth.
To begin with, we in the PDP are not aware Bello has a cabinet in place. And if there is one, I can categorically, and with all sense of responsibility say that there is not a single member of PDP member in that cabinet. If there are any of our members in the APC government that we do not know of, we challenge the APC to name them.
Continuing, Ogunmola said: ‘Of course, we have heard of one or two names who can be said to have residual links to the PDP. The point, however, is that they left the party long ago. Conversely, Governor Bello’s anti-PDP antics since assuming office, is legendary. Bello did not show up at the handing over ceremony from the erstwhile administration, to his own government, despite the long days and many hours of planning and waiting to bestow on him, the honours due to him as incoming chief executive at the time. He pitifully signposted the adversarial tenor of his government, even before his formal assumption of office.’
Advancing his argument further, the PDP spokesman said: ‘Here is an administration that has never deemed it necessary to accord the slightest recognition due to its predecessor, has never acknowledged the achievements of the preceding PDP administration, did not deem it necessary to admit that the Lokoja township road projects it is presently showcasing as an achievement are part of numerous projects almost nearing completion at the time Capt Idris Wada left office.
Here is a dispensation that has refused to pay salaries to anyone known to have worked with Capt Wada, a government which exported its irascibility to the seat of federal administration in Abuja and was responsible for attacks on PDP supporters right inside the High Court premises in Abuja, seat of the Kogi election petitions tribunal, a fact which can be verified from the security agencies.’
The statement added, “If indeed the APC has come to the realization that it has lost it with Bello, it definitely cannot hold the PDP culpable. Let them beam their klieglights elsewhere. They can as well search among the 6,885 bats in the northern forests”.
Ogunmola noted that the discordant tunes from the APC in Kogi State and Bello’s many battles across the borders of the state’s polity bear eloquent testimony to a house divided down its seam.
Said he: ‘A group within the party prides itself as the ‘core’ group, devolving from the original Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, another group aligns with the late Abubakar Audu/James Faleke sub-group, yet another faction are reportedly Yahaya Bello’s apologists, there is the wing loyal to the APC state executive, we can go on and on. How does a political party hold together with this type of divisions?
” For Governor Bello, he needs to be advised that there is a limit to the amount of battles one can fight at a time. Unfortunately, the governor hasn’t chosen his battles wisely. The other time the APC exco came out boldly to say they can never work with him because they feel they did the work and he is coming from nowhere to eat. Today he is fighting Wada, he is fighting Faleke, he is fighting 15 majority members of the House of Assembly, fighting civil servants, fighting appointees of PDP whom he has decided to withhold their outstanding salaries and entitlements, and now he is fighting APC exco. This is what happened when one man thinks he is an embodiment of power, wisdom and knowledge put together.
“The PDP is not in anyway enamoured of Gov Bello’s abrasive style and body language. As it is, he appears to be embattled from all sides. Yet he clearly does not possess the dexterity nor the political savvy needed to navigate the cul de sac at the end of the labyrinth he finds himself. Only time will time what will be the outcome of the political and legal lockjam in Kogi state.”
