Senator representing Kogi West Senatorial District at the National Assembly, Smart Adeyemi, has appealed to veteran Nigerian journalist, Reuben Abati, to come back to the All Progressives Congress (APC).
OsunDaily News reports that the APC chieftain made the appeal on Monday while fielding questions about the outcome of Kogi State gubernatorial primaries on Arise Television’s Morning Show program.
Smart Adeyemi claimed that Abati has always been hard during his interview with APC chieftains, stressing they were boys to Nigeria’s President-elect, Bola Tinubu.
He said: “Reuben you know you have been very hard on our party, you been very hard on APC. You know you and I were Asiwaju’s boys. Reuben you better come back to APC where you belong. Reuben come back home”
He also insisted there were no gubernatorial primaries in Kogi State, alleging the Governor, Yahaya Bello influenced the election in favour of Ahmed Usman Ododo, a former Auditor General for Local Governments in the state.
According to him, they were still discussing issues of the unavailability of electoral materials in their unit when they heard the result.
He said: “There was no voting, we were at our unit and there was no voting. They took materials from Abuja and went to their closet to thump print. INEC and its officials were not present.
“We were at our various wards talking to each other only to hear announcement of results at about 2pm.
“Ododo is the cousin brother of Yahaya Bello, there was no election. In my district, three of us bought the form and 24 hours to the election, two others were asked to step them.
“When the result was announced, Bello was seated there with no other aspirant other than Ododo. This is the worst form of rigging, I never believed this kind of thing can happen in the Nigeria of 2023.
“APC will have to decide if they want a candidate for the next election.
“The governor of a state is the leader of a party in that state, so he can’t run away from this.”
