Kunle Adelabu
Mr Musliu Adeshina Salau, the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) Chairmanship aspirant in Ikorodu Local Government, has charged electorates to vote candidates rather than parties in the coming Council Election.
He also stated that he is on a mission to wake his party from its slumber and place it on the path where it can challenge the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and reclaim power or serves as a strong opposition party.
Salau, who said that leadership is the bane of his party’s problems, spoke with THE IMPACT in a chat.
“I will tell Ikorodu people to vote for the right candidates and not parties in the coming local government election. Don’t vote for any candidate that is not good either in APC or PDP”, he said.
He said that people should be concerned more about the development of Ikorodu than any party.
Speaking on the state of PDP, Mr Salau, while stating that his party is sleeping, said that he is contesting for the chairmanship of the party to wake it up from the slumber and reposition it.
“I am contesting for the chairmanship position of the PDP in Ikorodu to bring the party back to active state. I can confirm to you that the party is sleeping right now”, he said.
“By the grave of God, I will wake the party up if I am elected as its chairman in Ikorodu.
“I have done it once when I was the party chairman in Ikorodu during the Makarfi led PDP but Chief Adekogbe took over from me.
“The party structure is not very okay and right now, we are doing reconciliation and trying to restructure the party.
“We are trying to bring the leadership together so that we can be one big party.
“We need to be one before we can win any election. If we are not together, we cannot even win local government election”, he added.
The former PDP party chairman said that the party is already in discussion with members that left the party and others to join them.
“The exodus of our members into the APC is due to the leadership problems that we have in the PDP. Once our leaders come together, we are definitely going to have a strong party.
“We are working towards our own party’s election and once we have new executives, you will see that new members will come.
“We are also talking with the old members too and they said that they are watching how we are going about the restructuring of the party and that they will rejoin us when they are convinced that we are back and better”.
He also alleged that the ruling party has not been winning elections freely.
He said that the party has directed its members to monitor their votes in various polling units and ensure that their votes are counted, especially during the forthcoming local council election.
“You are correct that we have not been winning elections but we have been trying our best but I know that APC has also not been winning many of the elections. They have only been writing local government election results because they are in government “, he alleged.
“We are prepared to monitor the votes in all the wards in the coming council election. Nobody will be allowed to write the figures anymore”.
Mr Salau also said that the party will be fielding candidates for the chairmanship elections in the six councils in Ikorodu Division.
“We have aspirants contesting for the chairmanship elections in the six councils in Ikorodu Division.
“Our party chairman told me just few days back that we have two aspirants in Ikorodu Local Government.
“We are going to checkmate APC in the coming election because our members are on ground as stated earlier.
“Not that the party (APC) has been winning elections, rather, they have been writing figures.
“The state electoral body, LASIEC, is under the Lagos State Government which is controlled by the APC.
“Let me give an example out of many. We won Ward C in the last election but they pronounced APC as the winner and we went to the tribunal and they could not produce the result”, he alleged.
“It will not be business as usual this time around. We have told our members to monitor their votes in various wards and ensure that they collect all the results before leaving the polling booths.
Assessing APC government in the state, the PDP chairman said that development has started coming to Ikorodu.
“APC at the state level are now focusing on the Ikorodu Division.
“Go to Ijede and other places, I have seen what that they are doing there which are good development in Ikorodu.
“My kind of politics is to commend people who are doing something right irrespective of their party affiliations.
“For the past 16 years, we did not see any impact of the APC in Ikorodu but we have started seeing it now”.
