Speaking with reporters, the Special Assistant on Public Communication to Senator Biodun Olujimi, Chief Sanya Atofarati said there was nothing to reconcile within the PDP-Ekiti chapter. He said the reconciliation meeting was a grand plan by Governor Fayose to mobilize party member ahead of its congress having realised the fact that he had lost the party structure.
He condemned the former governor as being ill-disciplined and disloyal to the cause of the opposition party, adding that the purported reconciliation meeting was not a genuine one but a decoy to mobilise his loyalist ahead of the party next year’s congress.
Atofatariti recalled that Fayose while in office as governor ran the party like his private fiefdom without recourse to the party’s organs and structures. He said the electoral fortune of PDP had dwindled because of the dictatorial tendencies of Fayose, who he accused of taking many decisions attributed to the SWC without consulting its members.
He said: “I can say unequivocally that Fayose is the architect of the dwindling fortune currently befalling the PDP in Ekiti PDP. He governed with impunity and render the State Working Committee useless by solely determining who get what, when and how without consultation.
“Even he campaigned against the candidate of the party, Senator Biodun Olujimi in the Feb 23 National Assembly. But thank Almighty God that Olujimi is now in the Senate. Since he left the state, he had not called for a reconciliation to even evaluate and assess what could have been the downfall of the party in all elections.
“But because of next year’s congress, he is now coming back to hijack the party structure. I believe party members will resist him.
Fayose has outlived his relevance in the party. He is only a shareholder. He would never invest in the party if he doesn’t have anything to get in return. And what moral justification does he even have to have called for such a constituted meeting? We understand his antics.
“ I believe PDP members know their leader. Senator Biodun Olujimi is the leader. She had staked a lot for PDP in Ekiti not to go into extinction.
I must tell you that immediately after Olujimi lost the National Assembly election which she later retrieved back from the appellate court she went ahead to give one millions naira to each of the nine assembly candidate for the March 3 elections.
Where was Fayose? He only ordered them to withdraw from the race, including the one from his immediate constituency. So can you refer to somebody like that as stakeholders?”
The squabble within the party got worse recently when Fayose and the party leadership threw brick bats over the sale of the state party secretariat located at Ajilosun area of Ado-Ekiti.