Kwara State Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq has described Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed as a noise maker who can’t win any election sin his ward in Kwara state.
In an interview with Thisday, the governor the APC state congress held at the weekend exposed the minister, boasting that his faction has all the members of the state house of assembly, except one who is in the minister’s camp.
Abdulrazaq said: “They’re noisy in the media, not on ground. Lai cannot win an election in his ward. They’re good with social media noise. That’s all they do. But nobody’s asking how each member of the state assembly emerged. How did they manipulate their way to win their seats?
“There was no godfather, putting people in place, everybody struggled to emerge. We would network and work with each other. No godfather. Everybody struggled in their own way. Yes, I gave money, and they also sourced money for themselves.
“So everybody struggled to win this thing. But some people will sit down and say that it is their party. It is this or that, that I don’t have anybody. If I don’t have anybody, I have all the legislators with me. Is that not something? Let them tell me, they have people.
“How many legislators do they have both in the state and national assembly on their side? It’s just a whole lot of media hype. Lai came a few months ago to make noise that he sponsored the campaign, did this and that. He made a lot of noise and pushed it to NTA.”
The information minister, during the inauguration of a new state secretariat in Ilorin in June, said the party entered “one chance” by supporting the candidacy of Abdulrazaq.
He said he raised a major part of the funds for the 2019 elections in the state, which the APC won by a landslide.
The governor, however, said the minister did not fund his campaign and that he planned the campaign himself with donations from friends.
He said the minister of “hijacked” the donations made for his campaign in 2019. “Everything that was donated, Lai Mohammed did not declare to the party, or to me. Some were direct donations to me,” he said.
“He did not know how we campaigned. He was in Abuja. Ask Minister Lai Mohammed, how many times he comes to Kwara? Our two ministers don’t come to Kwara. They are in Abuja. Both of them. Lai goes to Lagos. That’s his home.
“That’s where his son is a member of the Lagos state house of assembly. That’s where his family is. He has no house here. He doesn’t come here. As our minister, he doesn’t come home. Same with Gbemi Saraki. She doesn’t come. So it’s like we don’t have a minister,” he said.
