OGUN 2019: Ladi Adebutu, Dimeji Bankole Form Alliance

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2013

 

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A new scenario is presently playing out in the Ogun State politics.

 

In spite of the crisis that is obviously tearing the state’s chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) apart, some stakeholders are said to be realigning and forming alliance with the aim to increase the party’s fortune in the state ahead of the 2019 elections.

 

A reliable source told this magazine that, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole, leading a faction in the state’s PDP, was said to have gone into an agreement with a frontline governorship aspirant, Mr. Ladi Adebutu, who is also leading a faction.

 

Adebutu is eyeing the state’s number-one seat come 2019.

 

With the merger working as being planned, the team would be slugging it with the third faction led by an equally formidable politician in the state, Senator Buruji Kashamu Buruji.

 

Prior to the merger, we gathered, the three groups had held their congresses on May 11, 2016 at different venues.

 

While the Bankole faction reportedly held its congress at the Ake Palace Ground, Abeokuta, the Adebutu group was said to have held its own at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Libraray (OOPL) in Abeokuta, and the Kashamu group held its congress at the PDP Secretariat at Kobape Road, also in Abeokuta.

 

Meanwhile, sources have disclosed that the Adebutu faction was having former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s blessing, and that is why he allegedly made available to it for free his Ousegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) to hold its own congress.

 

The deal between the faction of Bankole and Adebutu was reportedly sealed during the zonal congress of the PDP, which held in Akure, Ondo State on May 14, 2016.

 

Sources said that in the deal, the Bankole group was offered the post of the Organising Secretary, which went to a former Majority Leader of the Ogun State House of Assembly, Fasiu Bakenne, while the group of Ladi Adebutu got the position of ex-officio, which was given to a former chairman of Ado-Odo Ota Local Government, Abayomi Tella and that of the Women Leader.

-Folorunsho Hamsat