The meeting called by the Elders Committee of the All Progressives Congress, APC in Ekiti State to reconcile warring factions in the state may have hit the rock.
Sources at the meeting held last Friday in Igbara Odo and which has in attendance three ex-governors of the state, who are members of the All Progressives Congress in Ekiti, failed to reach a compromise following the alleged insistence of two of the former governors to recognise APC national leader and former governor of Lagos, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, as their leader.
The ex-governors are Otunba Niyi Adebayo, the first executive governor of the state between 1999 and 2003, Engr. Segun Oni, who became governor under the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, but later decaped to APC and Dr. Kayode Fayemi, immediate past governor.
The three ex-govs, according to one of the sources at the meeting, came with the constitution of the party and said the party does not recognize Elders Forum, but that they were only at the meeting because of the respect they had for the elders.
The elders however told them that to resolve the crisis in the Ekiti State chapter of the party, there will be a need to reconcile the governors with Tinubu as the National Leader of the party.
It was at this point that Adebayo was said to have got up angrily and denounced Tinubu, insisting that he would neither reconcile with Tinubu and nor recognise him as leader because they were both governors at the same time.
At that point, the source said that the issue was dropped at the intervention of Segun Oni who suggested five names, including himself to the elders as those who would form a Committee to reconcile members of the party.
Along with Oni as Chair of the committee are Jide Awe, Mrs Okusanya, Dr Ganiyu Owolabi.
Sources however said that Dr Owolabi and Mrs Okusanya said they would not serve on such a Committee for as long as the three Gov’s insist on not recognizing Tinubu as their leader.
“If they don’t recognize Tinubu as their leader, what moral right do they have to expect me to recognize them as my leader too?” one of them was quoted as having said.
However, outside the venue of the meeting, thugs who allegedly accompanied Fayemi to the meeting almost beat up Chief Akilaya, who they insisted could not attend the meeting because, according to them, he had decamped to the Labour Party.
They booed and jeered at him and were almost pouncing on him when he had to flee the venue of the meeting.
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