New Telegraph

Lai Mohammed, BOB sabotaged Gov Abdulrazaq throughout campaign: APC Secretary Isowo

$ Insists Gov’ship candidate was sidelined in decision making, campaign funds

$Says ex-party chair was law onto himself 

$We were instructed not to join campaign
 
 
Reactions have continued to trail the expose of Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq on what went down in the run up to the 2019 elections in Kwara State, with the State Secretary of the party Alhaji Mustapha Isowo confirming that there were unilateral directives to party executives not to join the campaign train of the then candidate.
 
Isowo said in a statement on Sunday morning that former state party chairman Bashir Omolaja Bolarinwa personally warned him (Isowo) against joining the campaign of AbdulRazaq “in line with the decision of the party, even though I cannot remember the state working committee ever sitting to take such a decision at any time.”
 
“There is not a single thing the Governor said that is not true. In fact, he was very modest in his statements. We went through hell in the hands of BOB. He acted with absolute impunity. Party decisions were never discussed. Decisions were taken only between himself and Lai Mohammed. They solely decided who got what from campaign materials and funds.
 
“I have read BOB’s purported response. It is all lies. His claim that the Governor nominated Kale Belgore to the campaign committee which he himself and the Minister had set up is a blatant lie. After they tried to shove their campaign structure down his throat, the Governor merely asked Belgore to interface for him to re-negotiate the composition and this never yielded any result. BOB took decisions like the appointment of Sunday Oyebiyi as campaign DG purely on his own without consulting with anyone, at least not to my knowledge as the party State Secretary,” Isowo said.
 
According to Isowo, “a particular money that was sent to Kwara State after the presidential visit was received on behalf of the party by the candidate, as deliberately designed from Abuja, and its management was jointly decided at a meeting that BOB also attended with some elders. It will interest the public that the candidate was to be shut out from receiving the fund on behalf of the party if not for the insistence of the party headquarters in Abuja that they cannot mistreat the Kwara candidate for the sake of Lai Mohammed’s interest, especially when this specific money sent to other states without APC governors was received by the candidates in those states.
 
“But other funds never came through the Governor and he, like many of us in the party excos, were never briefed. We only got to know after the election. One of our offences was to ask them to account for all the campaign funds. BOB told us (party executives) point blank that he was not going to ask the Minister about the money. Nobody gave any account of how this money was spent. They on their own shared all the 20 vehicles, 500 motorcycles, 500 grinding machines, 500 sewing machines and hair dryers that were donated from Abuja for the campaign at the state level without consulting the candidate. The candidate complained about this but they did not respond. The 10 vehicles that were given to the party executives were later reduced to five; the 250 motorcycles given to us were reduced to 200. But the bottom line is that they truly never consulted with the candidate. In fact, they tried to change him but could not succeed because of INEC deadline. Their target was only winning the presidential election; they were telling people that they did not care about the governorship election. It was that bad.”
 
Isowo said BOB and Lai Mohammed ran the party like it was their private property, insisting “they never consulted with us and yet they were taking decisions in our names.”

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