Former Lagos State Governor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, yesterday, received bashing from some youth, who warned him to stop harassing the national leadership of the All Progressives Congress, APC.
The youth, who staged a protest at the national secretariat of the APC, decried what they said was the former governor’s overbearing influence in the affairs of the party.
They, therefore, urged him to leave the party alone, especially its national chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, and concentrate his political activities in the South-West.
Mr. Tinubu recently demanded the resignation of Mr. Odigie-Oyegun for his alleged role in the choice of Rotimi Akeredolu as the APC candidate in the November governorship election in Ondo.
Alleging that Mr. Odigie-Oyegun was perpetrating injustice, the former Lagos governor accused the APC chairman of being a mercenary of forces that seek to return the nation to the old ways of retrogressive politics.
But the youth under the aegis of APC Youth Democratic Frontiers, reminded Mr. Tinubu that Nigeria is bigger than a region or Lagos State, where he wields unrivaled political influence.
The protesting youths carried banners and placards with inscriptions such as “Tinubu is not God”, “Your greed is not democracy”, “No room for an emperor in a democracy”, “Reduce your selfishness and Nigeria will move forward again”, among others.
The group’s National Coordinator, Salahudeen Lukman, who addressed journalists during the protest, said its members could no longer fold their arms and allow party feudal lords to expropriate its ethics simply on regional nomenclature aimed at usurping the national interest.
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“It should be stated categorically that we are no longer comfortable with the whims and caprices of an orchestrated Jagaban resident in Bourdilion, Lagos and directed at misdirecting our progressive party simply to achieve egocentric empirical relevance”, he said.
“Let us state on a sad note that this overbearing tendency on the part of Tinubu is not limited to the federal level alone, he meddles in the affairs of even states that are not his home states”.
Mr. Lukman also accused the APC national leader of undermining the position of the president of the country by incessantly sponsoring the spurious ridicule of his anti-corruption fight.
He said each time fake stories of impropriety were written about these president’s appointees, paid critics and activists on hire were always quick to accuse President Muhammadu Buhari of fighting corruption while surrounding himself with corrupt people.
“What we learnt is that Tinubu is attacking these aides of Mr. President because he believes he should have been the one who makes appointments into those positions as opposed to what happened when Mr. President acted in national interest and cohesion to appoint tested and trusted individuals”, the coordinator alleged.
In a related development, the embattled APC chairman has denied sponsoring the protest against Tinubu.
Speaking with State House correspondents shortly after he emerged from a closed-door meeting with the president, Mr. Odigie-Oyegun said it was not in his character to sponsor protests against anyone, let alone, the former Lagos governor.
He promised to investigate and find out those behind the protests.
“God forbid, anybody who knows me knows that that is not my style. I’m equally shocked and I’m going to look into it and find out why and who is behind it (protest)”, he said.
