Two South-West national leaders of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and a former governor of Osun state, Bisi Akande on Tuesday met with all the 33 aspirants contesting the party’s governorship ticket in Ekiti State as part of efforts to produce a consensus candidate for the election, following the violent disruption of the guber primary earlier conducted in the state.
The meeting was held at the Lagos State Lodge in Abuja. The meeting was attended by some of the candidates including former governor of Ekiti State, Otunba Niyi Adebayo; former governor of Ogun State, Segun Osoba and many other APC South-west leaders.
Speaking after the closed door meeting, Chief Akande told newsmen that the efforts was intended to resolve the crisis rocking the party with the aim of arriving at a consensus candidate which is an option in the party's constitution.
“We took a decision on what will be the best advantage to our party and the country. Consensus is already written in our constitution and it is an option. Also, primary election is already in our constitution. But what we want is the general happiness of the leaders of the party, the contestants and our party.”
Speaking on whether parties involved agreed to a consensus arrangement he said;
“That option is given to them, but it requires them going back, think about it and inform us. We are going to talk to the party about what the aspirants have said and what we all thought was best and we know that the party will take the right decision.
The party chose the old date, chose the modalities and the method of doing it and when it was aborted, the party cancelled it. Who am I to say I disagree with that? I was not part of that process. I am now going to be part of the new process so that we don’t have the kind of problems we had.”
