Ondo election: Elegbeleye, other PDP chieftains join APC

7 years ago

Ondo election: Elegbeleye, other PDP chieftains join APC

Gbenga Elegbeleye, the immediate past director-general of the National Sports Commission (NSC), has officially dumped the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the All Progressives Congress (APC), barely two weeks to the governorship election in Ondo state.

According to a report on Leadership, Elegbeleye was joined in APC alongside over 5,000 of his supporters.

Others prominent figures who Elegbeleye led to the APC included: a former Chairman of Akoko South East council Ojo Victor, a former Senior Special Assistant to Governors Olusegun Agagu and Olusegun Mimiko, Muyiwa Asagunla and a former House of Assembly member Thompson Otito Atikase.

Addressing newsmen on Sunday, November 13, on why he and others dumped PDP for APC, Elegbeleye said:[i] “The PDP is being controlled by an army of occupants who make it extremely difficult to play its role as mainstream opposition party.”[i]

The former NSC boss, who was a PDP governorship aspirant, admitted that he jettisoned his political ambition in order to support the APC governorship candidate, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu (SAN).

According to him, Akeredolu is the best among those contesting for the governorship seat in the state base on his stewardship as Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice of the State in 1992 and as former President of Nigerian Bar Association (NBA).

He said that when Akeredolu was serving as the Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice and he ( Elegbeleye) was the chairman of Akoko North local government, they both meant well for the people of his constituency and the state.

While lamenting that Governor Olusegun Mimiko only deceived them with the flag off he did on the roads recently, Elegbeleye disclosed that Akeredolu had promised the people of his constituency, Ikare-Akoko in Akoko North East council, the dualization of the township roads if elected as the governor of the state.

He declared that the crisis in the PDP both at the national and state levels would make it difficult for the party to make any impact in the forthcoming governorship election in the state.

The Ondo governorship election is slated for Saturday, November 26.