Minister for Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu, has debunked insinuations that President Bola Tinubu will impose him on the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Oyo State as the 2027 governorship candidate of the party.
He said the APC would conduct a primary when the time comes, noting that the best candidate would emerge without any imposition.
Speaking with newsmen in the state capital, Ibadan, at the weekend, while hosting APC executives, ward chairmen, and leaders in Ibadan South East Local Government at his Iyaganku residence, Adelabu wondered how a president overseeing 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) would be interested in imposing the governor of a state.
He said the president believes in competition because it brings out the best in someone.
Adelabu said: “I’m ready to engage in healthy competition that will not lead to hatred and bad blood so that at the end of the day, after the primary elections when a winner would have emerged, there will be a good platform for reconciliation and other aspirants that lost would not lose everything, but there will be a way of compensating everybody with nominations and appointments and no one goes home without having anything.”
According to the minister, President Tinubu will not want to create bad blood in any state because all aspirants of the party belong to him, adding that even if the president has personal likeness for a particular aspirant, he could come to a state and vote for the aspirant.
“The best advice President Tinubu will give me is to go back to my state to work and win people to my side, which I have started, and it will be obvious to everybody that whoever eventually gets the governorship ticket actually worked for it, and I have started the work now,” he stated.
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He described President Tinubu as a true democrat who believes in the voice of the people and the followership, adding: “Nobody can do any top-down validation or top-down imposition of an aspirant as the candidate of the party; that will be the beginning of failure.”
Adelabu stated: “People want to see that any aspirant that emerges as the candidate of the party is voluntarily elected, and that is what I’m preaching. Nobody will impose anybody.
“There wasn’t any imposition in 2019 when I emerged as candidate of the party. I emerged in a keenly contested primary. I did the most work because my campaign was the most flamboyant and energised one then.”
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