War in APC over poll funds, as Omisore slams N500m suit on Lukman

VANGUARD

By Omeiza Ajayi, Abuja

The ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, is again enmeshed in another round of crisis, following recommendations by the National Vice Chairman, North-West, Salihu Mohammed Lukman, that the National Chairman, Senator Abdullahi Adamu and   National Secretary, Senator Iyiola Omisore, be eased out.

Lukman, who also accused Omisore of mismanaging party funds in Osun State, had on Friday said with a Muslim-Muslim presidency of Asíwájú Bola Tinubu and Senator Kashim Shettima, there was the need to ensure religious balancing, noting that Adamu should be replaced with a Christian, while Omisore should be replaced because his emergence had divided the Osun State chapter of the party.

“Apart from changing the national chairman, there is the need to also recognize that the case of Senator Iyiola Omisore, National Secretary of the party, has become a source of stronger dispute in Osun State.

“Unfortunately, rather than serving as a unifying factor for the party leadership in Osun State, Sen. Omisore is more a divisive factor, which may have been responsible for why APC lost the 2022 governorship election to a political mediocre whose only qualification in politics may appear to be comic dancing skill.

“To save Osun State and bring it back to its old standard of national political reckoning, Omisore would need to resign as National Secretary of APC, and a new unifying National Secretary elected. 

‘’Beyond Omisore, similarly, any member of the National Working Committee, NWC, of the party, who is not a unifying leader in his/her state should be changed,” Lukman had advised.

But in an interview on the Africa Independent Television AlT on Tuesday, March 14, Lukman allegedly went further to accuse Omisore of mismanaging funds deployed for the last Osun State governorship election.

Omisore fires back

Omisore, through his lawyers, ‘Lords Temple’ has now written Lukman, demanding within 48 hours a retraction of the said libelous statement and an apology to be published in two major newspapers and several online news outlets as well as “the payment of the sum of N500 million as damages for malicious statement against our client.”