The governorship candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Lagos State, Abdul-Azeez Adediran aka Jandor, has all but shut down any chances of an alliance with his counterpart of the Labour Party (LP), Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour.
Proponents of the school of thought that the All-Progressives Congress (APC) has overstayed its welcome as the government of the day in Nigeria’s commercial and entertainment capital have championed an alliance between both heavyweight opposition parties.
The calls grew louder in the wake of the LP’s unprecedented victory in the presidential poll, thanks to Peter Obi and running mate Datti Baba-Ahmed.
However, Jandor put hopes of such a union to rest, in a live interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Monday.
According to him, when his “project” started years ago, it was beyond a desire to become governor.
“If it’s to be governor, I could have been governor where I was coming from, but I chose this route,” he said.
The entrepreneur noted that when talks of an alliance began “flying around,” the PDP tabled the matter, “even though we [Gbadebo and I] haven’t sat together to discuss it”.
He added, “We came ourselves to look at the issue and say, ‘Within us, what do we want to do? Do we want to put an end to a dynasty that has held us by the jugular for over two decades? Where do we go from here?’”
According to him, the party decided to analyse every issue critically.
“We now discovered that the Labour Party candidate still has a case on his candidacy which is currently at the Supreme Court, we looked at it again that the Labour Party candidate also has an issue with Section 77 of the Electoral Act, which says if you’re leaving a particular party to another one, you must have been there, at least, for one month, that is, the party register would have been with INEC 30 days before that party primary,” he said.
Explaining that the legal issue could come up in post-election litigation, he said he would rather not be “sitting on a keg of gunpowder”.
Jandor added, “For us, we don’t have a problem, we would have said [to Rhodes-Vivour], ‘Go [on], let’s just take this [APC] government.’
“But knowing full well who we’re dealing with; we know the kind of character we’re dealing with; we know what can happen – there’s no point sitting on a keg of gunpowder.
“So, for us, we want an alliance; we don’t have any issue with it. But we must put our best foot forward. We must make sure that we go into this election without any snag whatsoever.”