NATIONAL Chairman, African Democratic Party (ADP), Engnr. Sani Yabagi, has tasked leaders and members of the party in South-West to ensure they win for ADP next month’s governorship poll in Osun State to serve as a launch pad for the party’s foray into the zone, saying that this should be a done deal as the party had enough time to prepare to achieve that feat unlike what happened in recent Ekiti poll.
This was just as the party’s Chairman, Board of Trustees (BoT), Chief Alani Bankole, told chieftains, including Lagos State chapter chairman, Mr Nasir Adewale Bolaji, Babatunde Gbadamosi, other zonal leaders, among others, who gathered at the South-West Stakeholder’s Meeting that took place at Protea Hotel, Ikeja, that ADP would rule Nigeria, come 2019, but would require that they work hard, shun complaints and arguments amongst themselves.
“Today, we are in a party that would rule the country,” he said, adding: “It is not enough to say Amen, we are to work hard to achieve it, this is not the time to complain, this is not the time for argument. We can do it, there is no other party in Nigeria other than ADP.”
Addressing the party leaders, the ADP national chairman, Yabagi, while making the appeal, said Osun State would not be difficult for the party to win based on information available to him indicating that the ADP governorship candidate was the popular choice of the people and having come from a senatorial district that had never had the opportunity of producing a governor in the history of the state.
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“I want to ask you to give us the launch pad in South- West, give us Osun, let us have Osun as our launch pad into the South-West. Let us come together, work together and ensure we win Osun.
“What I am hearing is that people are moving into ADP, our candidate is from a place that has not ruled the state before. Our candidate is popular, let us do whatever is possible to win that state.
“I want to appeal to you to do us proud, win the state and ensure we are not rigged out. We have enough time to prepare now. If we say we had not enough time to prepare in Ekiti. Unity is very important now, we are not in government yet, we don’t have money-bags but what we have is the commitments of leaders and members,” the party boss said.
Yabagi, who said ADP opted out of the coalition of political parties ahead of 2019, contended that being part of the agreement would be against what the party stood for as a credible alternative in the country “because we have seen the futility of the parties in existence.”
“Without a well organised political party in the country, you can’t practise democracy. We want to build a party that will make Nigeria work because we have lost everything. We want to make sure that the common man is able to achieve whatever he wants to achieve in life,” he said.
“We don’t want business as usual. If we didn’t opt out, how would we be able to describe ourselves as a credible alternative,” he queried.
Speaking further, the party chieftain lauded the Lagos APC chapter for making the party highly visible in the state, assuring the leadership of support and cooperation at all time.
In his own submission, Chief Bankole, while contending that ADP remained the only credible platform in the country as of today, said that Nigerians were eagerly waiting for it to form the next government, come 2019 as voting Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) back into power or the now ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) would mean voting for “hopelessness.”
“To go back to PDP is going to hopelessness. Nigeria is not ready for that, Nigerians are waiting for you. It is doable,” he said.
“You can see the hullabaloo going on now in the country,” Chief Bankole said, querying: “How can series of agencies of government be fighting themselves openly?”
“There has never been that kind of occurrence in the country without the president intervening. We thank the vice president for doing that,” he said.
He, therefore, charged ADP leaders and members to go back to their various wards, local governments as well as states to mobilise Nigerians for ADP in order to deliver the country in 2019 from what he termed the “state of hopelessness it (Nigeria) is today.”
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