16th August, 2011
Ahead of the October Local Government election in Lagos, crisis is brewing at the Ojodu Local Council Development Area, LCDA, over alleged imposition of candidates to vie for the chairmanship position on the platform of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN.
P.M.NEWS gathered that there are plans by some powerful leaders of the ACN in the council to ensure that the incumbent chairman, Hon. Olumiyiwa Oloro did not return as chairman, while the secretary to the local government, Mr. Yomi Tijani, is being favoured to take his place.
It was also gathered that the ‘king maker’ in the council held a meeting with the incumbent chairman, who was sworn in after Hon. James Faleke vacated the seat in April 2011 to contest the House of Representatives seat, and asked him to honourably surrender the chairmanship position and become vice chairman to Tijani in the coming election.
The situation, it was learnt, did not go well with some ACN members in the council who felt it was wrong for a sitting chairman to become a vice chairman to his secretary in the coming election, but the powers that be are ready to ensure that their wish is carried out.
On Sunday, a group known as the Oke-Ira Progressive Forum, Ojodu, vowed to ensure that Tijani did not become the chairman of the council and warned that it would carry its protest to the leader of the ACN, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, in Ikoyi.
Recently, Tinubu had said that incumbent chairmen of the party who have not spent two terms but performed well should be givien automatic tickets to vie for the chairmanship positions in their respective councils as they were able to deliver their councils to the ACN in the last April polls.
Those agitating for Oloro to be allowed to run for chairmanship of the council hinged their argument on the fact the he came from Oke-Ira community, which they said, had been marginalised in the scheme of things.
The president, Oke-Ira Progressive Forum, Mr. Tewobola Modupe, at the meeting attended by youths in the area, said there were plans by a powerful ACN leader in the council to impose a candidate on them, saying that everyone should be given a level playing ground to contest the ACN primaries for the council election.
He stated that the Ojodu council is made up of five communities, Ogba, Aguda, Oke-Ira, Akiode and Ojodu, adding that Ojodu had produced most of the council chairmen and other key positions for a long time, lamenting that Oke-Ira had never held any key position.
Modupe said the former chairman, Faleke is from Ojodu, while the current local government secretary also hailed from there, stressing that since the current chairman, who hailed from Oke-Ira had not spent up to six months in that position, he should not be stopped from running for another term, as some powerful leaders were currently doing ahead the council poll in October.
“These people want to marginalise us and we want to resist this. We want to fight this injustice emanating from the Ojodu cabal. I don’t see any reason why Oloro can’t be allowed to go for another term. Tinubu had said that all incumbent chairmen who have not spent two terms should be allowed to serve for another term.
“We will protest to Tinubu’s house over this injustice which is becoming unbearable. We will resist it; we want somebody from Oke-Ira,†he said.
A youth from the area, Tosin Shitu, stated that Oke-Ira had always produced over 70 percent of votes for the ACN in the council, saying that it was an insult for a powerful leader in the area to impose someone on them which they would revolt against.
—Kazeem Ugbodaga