Kwara APC chieftains battle over Ahmed's cabinet
There is a raging disquiet in the Kwara State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) over nomination of members for the cabinet of Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed.
The development has created camps and factions in all the 16 local government areas of the state as party chieftains try to outsmart one another in their bid to become commissioners and special advisers.
This followed the party's earlier request for nominations from the local governments for appointment into Ahmed's cabinet.
Each of the local governments is expected to nominate representatives that would serve as commissioner, special adviser, board member, among others. However, findings by our correspondent indicated that most of the local governments had nominated at least five representatives while Ilorin West local government believed to be the flagship council has up to nine nominations.
Stakeholders in the local government are sharply divided over who to occupy the two cabinet slots to be allotted to the area, being the most populated in the state with high concentration of party big wigs and people who call the shots. Apart from the Senate president and the state APC leader, Senator Bukola Saraki, who hails from the council, it also parades other big wigs like Senator Gbemisola Saraki, an APC Board of Trustees (BoT) member, Alhaji Kawu Baraje, a former minister Bolaji Abdullahi, and a host of others.
It was learnt that Senator Gbemisola Saraki is a case in point in the current jostle for cabinet slots. Daily Trust gathered that concessions were being made for her group which defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the APC on the eve of the last elections.
Sources told Daily Trust that the party leadership had committed itself to fully integrating Gbemi's group into the APC fold through the allocation of some cabinet slots and other appointments to members of the group.
Meanwhile, it was learnt that local government chapters would begin to submit list of nominees to the party secretariat with effect from today. Some of the criteria listed for would-be appointees to be met are loyalty to the party, political experience, contributions to the party and qualification, among others.
It was gathered that majority of the nominees would be new breed politicians who had not occupied any position before in order "to avoid recycling old cargoes".
A high ranking member of the party said, "Our leader, Senator Saraki, does not want to be involved because he is busy currently with national assignments and he would only intervene in cases where compromise could not be reached."
When contacted, the State Secretary of the party, Chief Bode Adekanye, said the disagreement was normal since it was a case of struggle by those who had contributed to the party. He added that disagreement did amount to acrimony in the party.
He gave assurance that the party would do justice in picking nominees and ensure that each ward and district was fairly represented in the various appointments.
"The disagreement is expected. You see this is a struggle for survival for those who have contributed to the victory of the party. This struggle informed the directive for nominations. We want to make it spread. We consider wards, districts that have benefitted through the previous election for everybody to reap from the dividends," he said.
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