It’s too late in the day for Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar to resolve the festering crisis in the Kogi State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Director General of the Yahaya Bello campaign organisation, Senator Smart Adeyemi has said.
Major PDP stakeholders in the state, including some aspirants in the September 3 governorship primaries, have continued to bicker over the outcome of the exercise, which saw Mr Musa Wada emerge as winner.
Some of the aggrieved aspirants have gone to court to challenge the outcome of the primaries, with one of the defeated aspirants, Senator Dino Melaye turning down an offer to lead the PDP campaign ahead of the November 16 governorship election.
Worried by the development, Atiku had been meeting with interested parties in the Kogi PDP crisis, with the view to uniting the party for victory at the poll.
But speaking with reporters in Abuja yesterday, Senator Adeyemi called on Atiku not to waste his time trying to resolve the crisis, saying that the situation in the Kogi PDP has gone beyond redemption.
Adeyemi said: “My advice to Alhaji Atiku Abubakar is that he should not waste his time and money. It is too late. I wish he did that six months ago.
“The crisis rocking the Kogi PDP are fundamental. They are without planning, they are without focus and people have made up their minds in Kogi State.
“How can you present the son in-law of a former governor who is also the younger brother of another former governor. Even if you are picking someone from the same zone, are there not other very competent persons from the zone?”
Adeyemi said the PDP was already dying in Kogi as a result of attempts by just interrelated families to dominate political power in the state, stressing that a former governor, his son and his in-laws were seeking to convert the state to their private fiefdom.
The campaign DG dismissed the widely held belief that the incumbent governor might lose the election to poor performance, saying that Governor Bello had preformed better than his predecessors who were elected on the platform of the PDP.
Adeyemi said he accepted to lead the governor’s re-election campaign on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on the conviction that the governor had recorded concrete achievements in terms of project execution and security in the state.