ALLEGED sponsored thugs have besieged the Oyo State secretariat of the All Progressives Congress (APC) at Oke-Ado, Ibadan to prevent the submission of forms used for yesterday’s ward congress.
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A party source who preferred anonymity said it was a plan by Governor Abiola Ajimobi and his loyalists to prevent the submission of forms as his loyalists failed to obtain the forms.
The congress committee members, who had fixed this morning for the collection of forms, are stranded. This is just as those who are in Ibadan, the state capital, to submit their forms are unable to move near the secretariat as machete-wielding thugs are everywhere.
It was learnt that Ajimobi, had few weeks to the congress, told the national secretariat of APC that the party was united and that they should not give the state chapter multiple forms.
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The party, sources told our correspondent, provided 9477 forms, and other members of the party who have ambition purchased the forms. The action, it was learnt, caught Ajimobi and his loyalists unawares.
Attempt by the governor to persuade the congress committee members to purchase forms for his loyalists proved abortive as they were said to have told him their hands were tied.
The action, it was gathered, led to last Saturday’s attack on communications minister, Barrister Adebayo Shittu, Sen. Monsurat Sunmonu, Hon. Adedapo Lam-Adesina and other members of the APC Unity Forum. Ajimobi later came and the pre-congress meeting was reconvened. The congress was postponed to Sunday, yesterday.
As early as 7 am this morning, sponsored thugs started arriving the party house, owned by the governor.
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Sources added that the plan was hatched yesterday. “When it dawned on the governor and his loyalists that there was nothing they could do, they deviced a means to safe their faces. They wrote a statement, using the name of the outgoing secretary of the party, Mojeed Olaoya, to carry it. The statement congratulated the APC members for the ‘successful’ congress’. But in the real sense of it, they had a plan to prevent the submission of forms. That’s what is manifesting now,” one of them added.
