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A serving lawmaker, representing Ekiti/Oke-Ero/Isis and Irepodun constituency at the Federal House of Reps, AbdulRaheem Tunji Ajuloopin has expressed his disappointment over what he described as petty, immature and greediness behaviour of Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed in the crisis rocking Kwara APC.
Hon. Ajuloopin expressed this on Sunday while responding to allegation leveled against him by the Minister, that he pocketed money raised by the party in tune of N70 million to prosecute his bye-election in 2018.
We could recalled that Lai Mohammed, on Saturday in Ilorin while addressing his supporters at the commissioning ceremony of the APC factional secretariat in Ilorin said “I want them to explain to Nigerians what happened to the N70 million that Hon. Olawuyi Ajuloopin, kept and refused to give us during the 2018 bye-election”
Addressing Journalists on Sunday, Ajuloopin, who is also from Minister’s constituency said “the allegation against me by the Minister, Lai Mohammed is frivolous, baseless, wild and it only exists in the imagination of the minister. The minister is only being economical with the truth, petty and resorting to the politics of pull him down”
“Let me give you the details by the details of what transpired in the build up to the by-election. A North Central State Governor reached out to me on personal ground to donate to the 2018 by-election and when the minister got wind of the donation, he immediately reached out to me and asked me to bring the money”
“However, I, immediately contacted a few of our trusted party elders to intimate them of the development, but they counselled me against sending the money to the minister based on his antecedent with money”
“Also, on my own, I personally gave Alhaji Lai Muhammed the sum of N32.5m, with the full knowledge of the former party chairman, Bashiru Bolarinwa, for election purposes; the minister and Bashir Bolarinwa cannot deny this except there is no conscience left”
“It will also interest the public to know that one senior Federal Government official told Governor AbdulRazaq who was then the candidate of our party that Lai Mohammed reached out to him and claimed that there was no money for the bye-election campaign in Kwara”
“The official whose name I won’t mention here spoke and pleaded with our Governorship candidate (now the Governor) and asked him to release N50 million to the minister, which was released but the money was never accounted for nor used for campaign purposes as envisaged”
“Now, if anyone is to be accused of mismanaging the 2018 campaign fund, it should be nobody other than Lai Mohammed, who till date cannot give details of how the money was spent”
“Why the minister would have the effrontery to accuse me of such criminality without recourse to due diligence beats my imagination and debased the exalted office he occupies. This simply suggests the minister was not even on the ground during the bye-election to know the enormity of work and resources put into winning the elections. What he did showed him to be somebody whose interest was to corner every available money donated for the purpose”
“At a time when the minister is supposed to be commissioning projects facilitated by him, especially in Kwara South, his immediate constituency and the State in general, he is busy polarising the party and commissioning factional secretariat of the party”
“Is that how a leader behaves? Leaders are not known to be petty, garrulous with unbridled passion to lie serially. This is unbecoming of a man of Alhaji Lai Mohammed status and he really need to watch it. Otoge is the struggle of our people. Let nobody claim undue credit for it”
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