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Lagos: The Obasanjo challenge
Wale Adedayo
THE gladiators in the current battle to control the soul of the troubled Alliance for Democracy should see the light in an assertion by President Olusegun Obasanjo that the ruling Peoples Democratic Party would capture Lagos State come the general elections of 2007. This should not be taken as an empty assertion.
Speaking during a dinner in his honour at Osogbo, Osun State last week, the President, who is the National Leader of the PDP, was apparently using the occasion to inform the gathered chieftains of the party from the South-West that the missing link in the PDP's 'conquest' of the region would be added in 2007. Obasanjo was not the first to make such a statement.
The National Vice-Chairman of the PDP, Chief Olabode George, made similar remarks more than 12 months before the 2003 elections. He declared to party faithful in Akure, Ondo State that the PDP woukld sweep the South-West during the next election. With the exception of the Lagos State Governor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, none of the then AD governors took George serious.
But the PDP's political prophecy came to pass against AD's hold on the South-West with such accuracy that the man left no one in doubt that he knew what he was talking about. With the AD riven by internal squabbles that has produced two national chairmen for the party, it would be interesting to see which of the two factions the Independent National Electoral Commission will ask to present a list of candidates for the 2007 elections.
If the experience of the last local government election is anything to go by, then the leaders of the party may need to work hard at ensuring that Obasanjo's prophecy about AD's hold on Lagos does not come to pass. AD candidates in some South-West states were either disqualified at the last minute or had their names rejected by the state Independent Electoral Commission on account of the division within the party.
What was painful to most AD loyalists were the cases of popular candidates who could have upstaged their PDP counterparts, but were prevented from being part of the electoral process because of the factionalisation of the party. Both Chiefs Bisi Akande and Mojisoluwa Akinfenwa stuck to their guns as being the authentic leaders of AD, even when their claims worked against the interest of the party both men claim to represent.
Since 2007 is no longer as distant as it used to be, given the preparedness of the PDP to stake its rightful claim to Lagos, genuine AD leaders may need to confront both Akinfenwa and Akande to let go of the party in order to prepare for whatever the PDP might have in the offing for the AD.
The Punch, Monday August 02, 2004
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