BEING A TEXT OF A PRESS CONFERENCE DELIVERED BY ALH. LUKMAN OLAYIWOLA MUSTAPHA, A GUBERNATORIAL ASPIRANT ON THE PLATFORM OF THE ALL PROGRESSIVES CONGRESS (APC), ON THE OUTCOME OF THE GOVERNORSHIP PRIMARIES CONDUCTED ON THE SATURDAY, 6TH OCTOBER 2018, ON THIS DAY, MONDAY, 8TH OCTOBER, 2018.
PROTOCOLS!
I stand here deeply humbled as a passionate Kwaran, having reviewed the journey so far, with the love and acceptance I got from across the length and breadth of the State, I am reinvigorated and left with no regret of the well thought out decision we took to throw our hat into the gubernatorial contest with a deep conviction that we have the technical know-how, contact and understanding of the plethora of artificial challenges militating against the realization of a Kwara we all can be proud of.
I was never under the illusion that the journey would be a smooth ride, it was envisaged that with the Nigerian mode of politics and politicking, the path will be laced with mudslinging, character assassination amongst others, yet we closed our eyes to these challenges, based on the truism that nothing good comes easy and nothing is too big to sacrifice towards rescuing the State from the violent and forceful grip of the heartless political hegemony that have intentionally and systematically impoverished majority of Kwarans.
We toured the entire State, journeying through the length and breadth of the State, coming in contact with dejection, abject poverty and neglect, dilapidated, decayed and at some places non-existent infrastructure and completely absent government presence. The Rebirth vision was a consequence of this miserable reality facing the good people of Kwara State.
The Gubernatorial primary election which eventually took place on Saturday after series of uncertainties surrounding the date, mode and eligibility. It is a fact that the exercise was fraught with several avoidable and artificial irregularities, which is a clear negation on our much flaunted democratic and progressive credentials. It must be emphasized that our great party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) must quickly put in place machineries to guide against future reoccurrence of such show of shame.
I must admit the large turnout was highly encouraging and a pointer to the renewed political awareness of Kwarans. It is a clear reassurance that the Kwara of our dreams is achievable with consistency, unrelenting and vociferous advocacy for good governance which will help birth a responsive and responsible pro-people government, that’ll be accountable to no one but the electorates.
For the records, our great party the APC that prides itself as the progressives party, ought to have done better with the process culminating in the Saturday primaries where not until after the commencement of the primaries, the list of the cleared aspirants were not released to not even the aspirants talkless of the numerous party faithful and the generality of Kwarans who’s interest and prayers was with our party hoping we’ll organize a faultless and non-acrimonious selection process that will be acceptable to all stakeholders and in consonance with worldwide best practices.
However, the Saturday exercise was a far cry from what was expected from a progressive party. The process started on a faulty footing with serial postponement without official communication from the party leadership, yet in the spirit of party unity and cohesion all the lapses were overlooked for the bigger picture.
According to reports from our agents on the field, majority of the local governments in Kwara South and Kwara North merely witnessed the callous hijack of the process by so-called party leaders, who sat down and just awarded scores to aspirants as it catches there fancy, which strictly based on the highest bidder, what we witnessed on Satu