The acting Leader of the Yoruba socio-cultural group, Chief Ayo Adebanjo has explained that he fell out with Chief Bisi Akande, former interim national chairman of the All Progressives Congress APC, after Akande and other governors of the Alliance for Democracy ditched the party’s core principle on the conduct of a sovereign national conference that would return the country to a true federalism as practiced in the First Republic.
Adebanjo gave the insight during an interview on the Arise TV Morning Show on Tuesday in reaction to the controversial autobiography, My Participations, recently launched by Akande.
Adebanjo explained: “I signed his (Akande’s) paper to be the (Osun State) governor. He was in contention with Chief Mojisoluwa Akinfenwa. Bola Ige told me that he(Akande) was one one they wanted. And I was the chairman of the party, Alliance for Democracy,AD, at the time. The relationship was cordial until they were elected into office and given the mandate not to participate in the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo until we have a sovereign national conference to change the constitution. That was when the problem started. No other reason”.
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He said that, “The AD governors were Bola Tinubu; Olusegun Osoba; Niyi Adebayo; Lam Adesina; Adebayo Adefarati and Akande. We contested the 1999 election on the basis that there would be a sovereign national conference. We insisted, just as I’m still doing now that there must be no election until we conduct a sovereign national conference to change the constitution produced by the military. It was the head of state, Abdulsalami Abubakar who said, ‘when you get into government, go and do sovereign national conference’. That time, I want to repeat for the record again, that the Alliance for Democracy was not qualified to be registered as a party. It was Abdulsalami who said, ‘you are wasting your time. You want do another election in Nigeria without the Yoruba? There will be no peace’.
We didn’t have money to open offices in states like Sokoto. The condition for party registration was to have offices in all states. But Abdulsalami said AD must be registered so that we could participate.
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“We now participated, we made it an election promise that there must sovereign national conference. That was the basis on which the six AD governors won the Southwest. We agreed that once we get mandate of the people, we would have nothing to do with the Obasanjo government until the sovereign national conference has been held. But immediately they got into government, they turned coat”.
Chief Adebanjo said when the AD governors dumped Afenifere leaders, they went to have a pact with Obasanjo to prove that they could win re-election without the Afenifere.
Obasanjo, however, reneged on the agreement with them that after getting the AD supporters to vote his party, the People’s Democratic Party PDP in the 2003 presidential election, the Presidency would rally to ensure that the AD governors they were voted to retain their governorship positions. All the governors lost re-election except Tinubu who chose not be part of the deal as Obasanjo worked against their re-election in the governorship election.