OYO APC LEADERS AND ABUSE OF PRESIDENTIAL ACCESS By Tolani Ogunmola

The latest visit of some select APC leaders to President Bola Ahmed Tinubun would make it about the 10th of such meetings in the last one month or so.

The report of the meeting had been the same. Efforts to market a governorship candidate. Either to use the photo opportunity to convince gullible party members back home that the candidacy was a done deal or to make more dollars from the financier who has endless access to government fund.

What is unfortunate in all these meetings is that never once was it reported that they went to discuss the development of Oyo State or to attract a federal project to Oyo State. It is all about sidetracking the democratic process to impose a tiny cabal on the party.

The most unfortunate is that characters who were in the trenches in 2019 and 2023 respectfully against Governor Ajimobi and Senator Teslim Folarin’s purported attempt to impose candidates on the party are the senior apostles of imposition today.

Characters like Ayo Adeseun,Fatai Ibikunle,Yunus Akintunde and Zacheus Adedeji have proved that they fought against imposition in the past out of convenience. Not out of conviction.

My good people of Ogbomosho should please ask Ayodele Adeseun if he raised the issue of the kidnaping of 40 victims including helpless teachers and innocent children by kidnappers in his Ogbomosho territory in his latest visit to Mr President. No. Human life is immaterial. It is the inordinate quest for power that defines the life of these politicians.

A word of advice for them: if a father needs to tell his wives and children at every turn that he is the head of the family,then there is a problem. If you need weekly presidential visit and endorsement for your governorship candidate, perhaps you have made a wrong choice which is known to all of you but none of you is honest enough to accept for the fear of losing the supply of dollars drawn from the blood of innocent Nigerians.

The frequency of the visit is also raising questions of professionalism in the handling of access to the president. Could the fact that the State House Chief of Protocol is from Oyo State enough reason for this apparent abuse of access? Could the regular abuse of presidential access explain the belicose mien of the Chief of Staff to the President in the pictures taken at the last visit?Is there no one supervising the SCOPE such that he does not turn the President’s abode to a rendezvous of townsmen weekly meetings?

Last line. If we are to abuse access to Mr President, please let it be for advancing the quest for federal presence in Oyo State. Not the promotion of the inordinate ambition of a tiny cabal.