Chief Segun Osoba
• Party admits non-payment of advert debts to media houses
The crises in the Ogun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) deepened following calls by aggrieved members of the party for the cancellation of the delegates’ congress held in the state.
The aggrieved chieftains led by Adekunle Adesina, stormed the national secretariat of the party in Abuja on Tuesday, accusing Governor Ibikunle Amosun of sidelining them in the party’s affairs.
Adesina, who spoke to reporters after their meeting with the John Odigie-Oyegun National Working Committee (NWC), accused Amosun of desperately making moves to foist his preferred successor on them in the 2019 poll.
The group, believed to be loyalists of former Governor Olusegun Osoba in their petition to Odigie-Oyegun alleged that Amosun singlehandedly picked his loyalists as delegates to the forthcoming non-elective national convention slated for end of year.
They also claimed that the Acting Chairman of the state party, Tajudeen Lemboye, violated the party constitution by removing names of officers and delegates at all levels and replaced them with Amosun’s cronies contrary to article 21 (D) of the constitution.
They, therefore, urged the NWC not only to cancel what they described as the “kangaroo” congresses, but also reject the list that emanated from the process.
Meanwhile, the APC yesterday admitted that it had failed to pay advert monies running into millions of Naira it owed media outfits in the country over time.
Its National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, who disclosed this in an interview with the Africa Independent Television (AIT), however, said the party would not have been so indebted if journalists assigned to cover the APC did not cajole it to pile up the debts.
His words: “I think we have started paying. Maybe if we were doing things the way the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) did, using government’s money to fund the party, it is possible we won’t even have all these. But we have started paying.
“Let me admit that it is wrong for us not to have paid for those adverts within the period that they were not paid. Some of these things were backlogs from the last two years or so. But we do not have problems with salaries of staff. You see, people just exaggerate some of these things.”
Abdullahi said as a journalist, he understands how things work, adding that sometimes when things happen, journalists insist on placing adverts, which is why the debt profile had risen so high.
The party came under attacks last week over its failure to pay up advertisement debts amounting to over N25 million owed Vanguard, Nation, Thisday, Punch, Daily Trust, Blueprint, The Guardian, The Sun and Leadership, among others.
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