Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State and Senator Kashamu Buruji.
A new wave of crisis is set to hit the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) following the alleged hijack of the entire party structure in the South West zone by the duo of Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State and Senator Kashamu Buruji.
An impeccable party source said that the two men completely side-lined the rest stakeholders in the party in the zone in the control of the party structure, and are now dictating the pace without consulting other party leaders like Chief Olabode George, Ebenezer Babatope, Yekini Adeojo, and others.
It was gathered that Chief Shuaib Oyedokun is the only leader in the zone said to have the ears of the duo.
Oyedokun, is being touted as a possible candidate for the chairmanship of the party’s Board of Trustees (BoT).
Ali Modu-Sheriff, national chairman of the party, is said to be giving open support to the two men whom he was quoted to have said, were his main backers in the bid to emerge the National Chairman of the PDP.
Modu-Sheriff is said to be giving recognition to Senator Buruji and Governor Fayose as the leader of the party in the South-West even with the presence of other bigwigs.
Incidentally, Governor Mimiko is the current chairman of the PDP Governors Forum.
Governor Mimiko played a major role in helping to douse the tension in the party while the battle to prevent Modu-Sheriff from continuing beyond the February mandate of Adamu Mu’azu raged.
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However, showing how firmly they are in control, the duo of Senator Buruji and Governor Fayose are said to have unilaterally shared the three positions allotted to the South-West in the zoning arrangement adopted by the party last week between them, and have summarily adopted candidates for the slots.
The party had in adopting the zoning arrangement, gave the positions of National Secretary, National Auditor and National Publicity Secretary to the South-West states.
The National Chairman seat was zoned to the North-East with a target to seeing Modu-Sheriff return as the party’s chairman.
According to the rule adopted in arriving at the zoning formula, states from the six geopolitical zones which currently have representations in the National Working Committee (NWC) are not expected to present candidates for elections at the convention slated for May 21 in Port-Harcourt.
If this is rigidly followed, Osun State and Ogun State would be barred from nominating candidates for the three slots allotted to the South West zone in the forthcoming elections.
This would leave Lagos, Oyo, Ekiti and Ondo states to slug it out and reach a compromise among themselves on the sharing formula.
While the struggle for the zoning lasted, the South West caucus was said to have agreed that the position of the National Secretary should be given to a nominee from Lagos State, whose identify is not known yet, while Eddy Olafeso, a loyalist of Governor Mimiko was said to have been agreed upon as the candidate for the National Publicity Secretary.
The third post, which is the National Auditor, is yet to be agreed upon by the caucus.
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