Ogun LG election: ‘APC has no candidate in Sagamu yet’

The All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate for Sagamu in the upcoming local government election in Ogun State has not emerged yet, Tribune Online can report.

According to Kola Akinyemi, chairman of the APC Reconciliation and Mobilisation Committee in Ogun East senatorial district, names of three persons from which the party’s candidate for Sagamu Local Government will eventually emerge have only, so far, been shortlisted.

Otunba Akinyemi spoke to Tribune Online on Friday.

To arrive at this shortlist, Akinyemi said 33 party leaders were involved in the process. 

“We asked each of the 33 leaders to write three names from a list of 11. That was selection, not election. We wanted to select three aspirants out of 11 for the primary election proper,” he said.

He pointed out that not even the person with the highest number of vote out of the three can claim to be the party’s candidate as they all remain aspirants at that level. 

Consequently, Akinyemi said, “Presently, we don’t have any candidate”. 

He gave the names of the three aspirants as Gbenga Banjo Baruwa (Ward 6), Afolabi Odulate (Ward 5), and Tope Adesanya (Ward 7), all in Sagamu constituency 1. 

The list of these aspirants, according to Akinyemi, has already been forwarded to the Ogun State governor, Prince Dapo Abiodun, who in the first place instructed that the list be pruned to three. To confirm this, Tribune Online saw a letter by the chairman of the APC in Sagamu Local Government Area Honourable Rafiu Opaleye containing these three names and which was addressed to Governor Abiodun “for final approval”. The letter was dated May 20, 2021. The local government election in Ogun State is scheduled to take place in about two months.