Date: 2013-02-04

Kwara ACN on Sunday alleged fresh plot by the PDP-led state government to sack the only ACN chairman, Prince Saheed Popoola, using the recent Offa-Erin Ile crisis as a smokescreen.

In a statement issued in Ilorin on Sunday, the state ACN chairman, Kayode Olawepo, said the party "has it on good authority that the leadership of the Kwara State PDP has resolved to hide under the recent Offa-Erin Ile crisis to remove the only ACN chairman in Offa council by dissolving the council." Olawepo accused the PDP of hiding under the crisis to achieve its longstanding aim of ridding Kwara of opposition by removing the only chairman elected on the platform of the ACN.

The statement read: "This is the latest evil plan of the desperate PDP after previous plots to remove the chairman have failed.

"This latest plan is condemnable and reeks of hypocrisy and cheap politics. It will fail! It is on record that the Offa Chairman has since four months ago - long before the outbreak of the recent violence - intimated the PDP-led state government of suspicion that some elements were planning to unleash violence on the two communities. He not only wrote to the office of the Secretary to the State Government (SSG), he also attended a meeting convened in Ilorin to devise strategies to maintain peace.

"We therefore see as mischievous and pre-determined the attempt to hide under this security challenges to dissolve the council and remove the chairman. If the state government which equally had prior knowledge of the situation could not forestall the outbreak of violence, any attempt to blame the Offa chairman for the violence is cruel and suspicious. The PDP perhaps sees the crisis as the cheapest means of achieving the evil plot to rid Kwara of opposition by all means, however unfair and crooked."