APC asks Lagos PDP chair to resign

August 18, 2015 : Eniola Akinkuotu 1 Comment

   

 

Chairman of the Lagos State chapter of the People Democratic Party, Mr. Tunji Shelle

The All Progressives Congress in Lagos State has asked the Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party in the state, Capt. Tunji Shelle (retd.), to resign for failing to secure victory for the PDP in the last governorship and presidential elections.

The APC also slammed Shelle for saying President Goodluck Jonathan contributed to the defeat of the governorship candidate of the PDP in the last election, Mr. Jimi Agbaje.

Shelle had said the APC won the governorship election in the state because Jonathan “allowed the APC get away with a lot of illegalities.”

Shelle had told supporters on Saturday that had Jonathan stopped the APC’s illegalities and won the presidential election, Agbaje would have also won.

However, the Publicity Secretary of Lagos APC, Mr. Joe Igbokwe, said in a statement on Monday that Shelle was not telling his supporters the truth.

The APC said Shelle should have resigned honourably and given way to a more competent person, having lost the governorship elections in 2011 and 2015 in Lagos State.

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The statement read, “All over the world when a chairman of party becomes a serial loser, he does not need anybody to counsel him to leave the stage for fresh hands but not Shelle of Lagos PDP.

“If he is not blaming party leaders, he turns his miserable searchlight to the opposition and now he is blaming former President Jonathan

“The totally devastated Shelle, who has been suffering votes of no confidence since the last elections, told his party members in Amuwo Odofin, Lagos, that former President Jonathan allowed APC to get away with a lot of illegalities during the last elections which led to Agbaje’s defeat.”

On the presidential election, Igbokwe said Jonathan lost as far back as December last year when the PDP handed him its presidential ticket and ignored the zoning arrangement which characterised Nigerian politics.

He said it was not the turn of the South-South geopolitical zone to produce the President, following the death of former President Umaru Yar’Adua.

He said, “Tunji Shelle must be told that the day Jonathan picked the PDP ticket for the presidential election was the day he lost the election. Jonathan should not have contested in 2011 given the political arrangement put in place after the June 12, 1993 election crisis to rotate power between the North and the South every eight years.

“There was no way Jonathan would have won with the 11 states in the South-East and South-South against the 25 states in the South-West, Noth-East, North-West and North-Central. Even if the South-South and South-East voted 150 per cent beyond mathematics, Jonathan would not have won that election.

“In fact, the millions of votes Jonathan got were padded. That was the permutations, calculations and analysis blockheads and peevish schoolboys in PDP failed to take into consideration.”

The APC asked Shelle why he did not tell the PDP supporters that the illegalities perpetrated by the Oodua People’s Congress when the OPC went on the rampage in Lagos caused the PDP’s defeat.

Igbokwe added that Shelle should have told his supporters that the illegalities perpetrated by the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme task force caused the PDP’s defeat.

He added, “Excuses can never help Shelle and the PDP. Governor Akinwunmi Ambode defeated Jimi Agbaje with more than 150,000 votes even with their illegalities, money politics and ethnic politics. This is a lesson.

“Let Shelle resign and give way for a fresh hand to help the party. This is the path of honour.”