Barrister Adebayo Shittu,
By ROTIMI AGBOLUAJE, Ibadan
A former Minister for Communications and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Oyo State, Barrister Adebayo Shittu, yesterday, rejected the reconciliation committee set up by the immediate-past Governor of Oyo State, the late Senator Abiola Ajimobi to reconcile aggrieved party members in the state.
Shittu, who stated this at a radio programme in Ibadan, affirmed he could speak on behalf of the Unity Forum in APC, emphasising that former Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala is not qualified to head the reconciliation committee in the circumstances.
It would be recalled that Ajimobi, after his appointment as the National Deputy Chairman (South), appointed former Governor Alao-Akala to head the Reconciliation Committee to address grievances of different warring factions within the party.
Shittu said: “The Alao-Akala-led committee has not spoken with me directly. I am expecting one of their emissaries later today. I have all the respect for Governor Akala, but I don’t think the way that committee was set up was in good faith.
“Before that committee was set up, the National Working Committee had set up a national reconciliation committee, led by Chief Bisi Akande, our respected leader. The national working committee did not say, ‘Oyo State is not part of your mandate.’ As a national reconciliation committee, it was to cover all the states of the federation. If that has happened, and then you find perhaps one of the people, who were active in creating the problems that we had, now setting up another committee to usurp the national working committee’s functions and responsibilities, then a big question mark arises.
“When Alao-Akala took up that job, I actually challenged him. I told him it was not good for him to take up such responsibility, as he was frustrated out of APC. As frustrated as I was, I never left APC. He was so frustrated that he had to leave APC for Action Democratic Party (ADP). When was he reconciled that he should now qualify as the chairman of the reconciliation committee?
“Out of about the 12 members making up the committee, at least 10 are known acolytes of the late governor. If you have two main factions in the party, and you seriously and in good faith want to set up a reconciliation committee, the wise thing would have been to take from both factions. That was not done. So, I don’t see how members of Unity Forum would have confidence in that. We would have preferred that neutral persons, as put together by the National Working Committee be allowed to do it, so that everybody would be confident they would get justice in the reconciliation processes…” (The Guardian)
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