Bolaji Abdullahi, a former national publicity secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has said Adams Oshiomhole, the APC’s National Chairman, deserves the political tribulation he is currently facing at the helm of the party.
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A Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court in Abuja had on 4 March restrained Oshiomhole from parading himself as the party’s chairman after he was allegedly suspended by his ward, but the Court of Appeal, Abuja Division, ordered a stay of execution of the lower court’s judgment pending the hearing of an application filed by the embattled chairman.
Speaking in an interview, Abdullahi, a former minister of Sports and Youth Development, claimed that Oshiomhole’s current political trial was inevitable as he had become an individual who never gets to respect divergent political views, adding that he humiliates people who present more superior arguments to his.
Referring to an encounter he had with the former Edo State governor, Abdullahi, who defected back to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2019, described the APC National Chairman as a “completely different human being” while debating thoughts.
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“What he’s going through now is inevitable. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything personal against him. We actually had mutual respect for each other before he came into the party and it was on the basics of that, I tried to engage him. I was a PDP minister when he was ACN governor in Edo State and during the first ‘Ukpepe’ Marathon that he organised, as the sports minister, I went there against all odds, even though we belonged to different parties. Some people were whispering to me then why I should not go there. I went there, because I believed in what he was doing. So, it was on the basics of that I believed that we could work together when he came into the party. But he was a completely different human being.
“So, whatever he’s going through now, I think he deserves it, I think it’s a matter of time before he got it,” Abdullahi told Leadership.
The PDP chieftain expressed hope that the current episode will help Oshiomhole learn to become more humble and not insist on winning every argument.
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“If he can use this experience to learn a new way of dealing with people, it will be better for him, it will be better for the party. That’s my own take.
“Maybe, if he sees this as a teachable moment that he can learn something from and learn to respect people he works with and that you don’t have to win every argument then, it is fine. He appears to have a need to not just win every argument but to humiliate whoever he is arguing against. Why should it be like that?
“So if he’s able to learn a new way of thinking and a new way of behaving from this experience, he will be a better person because I actually think he is very efficient,” he said.
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Abdullahi also explained that he resigned from his role as the ruling party’s spokesperson because he could not verbally attack Bukola Saraki, the immediate past Senate president and a man widely regarded as his political mentor.
According to him, Oshiomhole and some other persons in the APC’s National Working Committee (NWC) were annoyed that he (Abdullahi) did not launch ripostes aimed at the former Senate president.
He stated that he was elected into the party’s NWC to become an attack dog, insisting that he did the right thing by resigning from his position as he could not betray Saraki because of the personal interest of a group of people.
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He said: “Being loyal is part of my upbringing, you don’t learn that in school, but that does not mean that I don’t have my own experiences, or I don’t have my own stories. My experiences and encounters on a daily basis largely inform what I do. So I had my own experiences within the APC, I joined the party as national publicity secretary, at a very difficult time in the party’s history and I think we were able to stabilise that party with nothing. We were able to pilot it from a very difficult face in the party’s history.
“When things began to happen, and people came into the party, like the current chairman, Adam Oshimhole and a couple of other people came into the party, and they began to think they have a better idea of how I should do my job as a publicity secretary and they thought that as the publicity secretary of the party, I was not attacking Saraki, therefore, I’m not doing my work. And I said, who am I attacking? Point at one person that I am attacking? I don’t attack a person, that was not my job, I address the issues. So if you are looking for a publicity secretary that will be attacking people, then you have to get somebody else because I don’t attack people.
“And when it gets to a point that someone who is the chairman of the party doesn’t recognise and respect other members of the NWC, and treat them and talk to them as if they were his appointees, I had no stomach for that. I respect people but when you insult me, we have to reassess the relationship.”
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Abdullahi also explained that contrary to speculations peddled around, his relationship with Saraki remains cordial.
He, however, admitted that his political relationship with his political mentor is strained, as allegations that the former Senate president denied him the Kwara State PDP governorship ticket in the 2019 elections remains rife.
Although he described the disagreement with Saraki as “personal”, he said he is “trying to pick up the pieces”, saying: “Yes, we may bring the pieces together again, we may never be able to bring up the pieces together again, everybody’s willing to pick up the pieces, but in terms of personal relationship. Oh, no, no, no, there’s nothing. Nothing has gone wrong.”
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