17th June, 2014
Yisa Jamiu
The race for who succeeds Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, as the Governor of Lagos State in 2015 continues to get hotter day by day, not only in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) but also in the main opposition party in the state, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
As expected, speculations are rife as to who and who are the annointed aspirants in the ruling APC.
However, in the PDP, there has not been any serious aspirant, as it seems potential aspirants in the party are shying away from coming out publicly to declare for the coveted post, just few months before the election.
P.M NEWS Political Platform can however reveal authoritatively that Minister of State for Defence, Senator Musiliu Olatunde Obanikoro, may have rekindled his interest in the job.
Senator Obanikoro, insiders within the ruling and main opposition party, told our correspondent, remains the biggest and strongest candidate PDP can present in Lagos for now.
This medium can also revealed that the Minister has started consultations on his guber ambition as he has started visiting elders of the party not only to know their views but also to seek their blessing.
On Friday, 13 June, 2014, at about 12noon, the Minister was in the house of a chieftain of the party in Mushin area of the state.
He discussed with the chieftain for about an hour before leaving to observe the Juma’at service at about 1pm.
It was reliably gathered that Obanikoro will soon conclude his consultation before making his ambition public.
Senator Musiliu Obanikoro has a very rich political resume going back to the day he joined active politics during the aborted Third Republic where he was a prominent member of the defunct National Republican Convention (NRC) which ruled the state between 1991 and 1993. He was appointed Chairman of the board of the Lagos State Bulk Purchasing Corporation then.
During the moribund Abacha transition period, Obanikoro was elected Chairman of Lagos Island Local Government on the platform of the erstwhile Grassroots Democratic Movement (GDM).
In the current political dispensation, Obanikoro was Lagos State Commissioner for Home Affairs and Culture between 1999 and 2003.
He was elected Senator in 2003 to represent the Lagos Central Senatorial District, all these as a member of the Alliance for Democracy (AD).
It was in the Senate that he defected to the PDP and he ended up becoming the party’s governorship candidate in the state for the 2007 governorship election.
After losing the election, he was appointed Nigeria’s High Commissioner to Ghana where he spent four years, coming back home to become the Chairman, of the Board of Directors of the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) before his present appointment as Minister of State for Defence.