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Ex-commissioner emerges APC chairman in Oyo

October 31, 2021 No Comments

A former Commissioner for Lands and Housing in Oyo State, Isaac Omodewu, on Saturday, emerged as the All Progressive Congress (APC) chairman in the state.

Omodewu was elected chairman after delegates reached a consensus and affirmed his candidacy at the congress held at the party’s state secretariat in Oke-Ado, Ibadan.

A strong contingent of security operatives was seen at the APC secretariat on Saturday morning with two mobile police vans and armed officers strategically positioned within the premises.

There were fears that the exercise may be postponed again due to disagreements over the delegates’ list.

The pre-congress meeting slated to hold early in the morning did not start until 11:30 a.m., prompting fears that the process had been put forward again.

The congress was postponed twice over allegations that some groups in the party had doctored the delegates’ lists.

In his address after the confirmation of his election as APC chairman in Oyo State, the ex-commissioner appealed to party members to put their grievances aside and work for its success in future elections.

Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, and his former Commissioner for Chieftaincy and Community Affairs, John Bazia, threw caution to the winds when they engaged each other in a war of words while on a live television programme on Monday night.

Bazia, who defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC) from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) after he was dropped from Wike’s cabinet, and the Governor were on a Channels Television programme, Politics Today, when the anchor asked the former Commissioner to describe his former boss. He said:

“The governor, Wike, I must tell you that all those who are with him, they know what they are going through.

“But you have been seeing him on TV and the way he has been behaving in Nigeria. Sometimes, you will be baffled if that is an enlightened and educated mind; the way he carries himself.

“He forgets that he holds the exalted position, the office of the governor. He behaves like a thug…”

When the anchor turned to Wike to get his reaction, the visibly upset governor who felt insulted by the words of Bazia, quickly interjected and replied:

“You sit down there and somebody who said I appointed him had the temerity, the audacity, to say I behave like a thug, and you are asking me that question to react to what somebody I appointed as commissioner.

“However, let me tell you: look at him talking now. When he was commissioner, did he look that haggard?

“A thug appointed you commissioner; you never knew that he was a thug but he appointed you a commissioner.

So, only when he removed you that you then know that he behaves like a thug.

“You did not resign, you were working with a thug all the while until when the thug did not bring you back as a commissioner for a second term in 2019, you then realised that he behaves like a thug.

“Now, look at the kind of characters we have and these are the kinds of people that you want me to respond to: somebody who stole the ‘kola’ of traditional rulers and up till now, he has not gone to court to challenge our allegation that he stole ‘kola’ given to traditional rulers and clergymen.

“Why did he not resign when he was commissioner? When I won my second tenure, he was lobbying that I was going to bring him back, but when I appointed another commissioner, he knew that he would not come back.”