Kunle Adelabu
The Chairman of the African Action Congress (AAC) in Ikorodu Local Government, Comrade Michal Olasoji, has described the situation where his party will not be fielding candidates for the Chairmanship and Councillorship positions across the six councils in Ikorodu as unfortunate.
While stating that it is not what the party wanted, Comrade Olasoji also stated that the ideology and principles of the party is very paramount in picking candidates to represent the party.
He spoke with THE IMPACT after the centralized elections of the party in the state, held at one of the party’s secretariat at Oworo, Kosofe, Lagos.
“It’s quite unfortunate and not our pleasure for some aspirants not scaling through the party screening process. Firstly, the ideology and principles of the party must be strictly adhered to and is supreme whenever we are embarking on our activities.
“For any aspirant to aspire under our political party, he or she must be a registered member at least a minimum of 6 months to 1 year. He must be a person of clean record, without any corrupt issues among other criteria.
“But some of the aspirants that showed interest in aspiring on our AAC’s platform have not spent up to 6 months. They are not familiar with our party ideology”, he explained.
He further explained: “One of our aspirants has to suspend his political aspiration due to the recent murder of his late elder brother who was a member of the opposition party.
“Some withdrew for some personal reasons which we understood”, he added.
The AAC Chairman in Ikorodu, also stated that the party is being cautious in accepting anybody to join or use its platform because of its experiences in the past elections where they achieved their aspiration on the platform of the AAC and later abandoned it for their original party.
“As a party, we are very cautious and careful of who would contest or emerge as candidates in our political party, because of our hugely past experiences.
“We will never allow our party to be seen or used as Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), whereby, any individual can come and use the party to achieve his or her personal gain.
“We avoided individuals from opposition parties that failed in their primary elections, to use our party to contest, because if possibly they win, after sometime, they would go back to the party they came from”, he said.
While stating that AAC is a party in process and a platform distinguished by its ideology, Comrade Olasoji said that his party is fielding credible candidates in other parts of the state.
“As a party, we believe we are in a process and we know that our ideology distinguishes us from other political parties. We are not desperate to field any candidate all because we want to participate in an election. What we stand for is to field candidates that appreciate the party’s manifestos, reckon with the people and drive the ideology of the party, which is socialism.
“As a party, we believe in getting it right. We have many elections in future, that we will participate here in Ikorodu.
“Our party have candidates in every other Local government in Lagos that are contesting for the coming elections and we believe that we would not only participate for participating sake, but participate to win, especially in our strong wards and local government”, the AAC Chairman said.
While reinstating that the party would not be participating in the elections in Ikorodu, he added that AAC is not expecting a free and fair process from the electoral umpire.
“As a party, we are work in progress towards having and fielding credible candidates for election in future and residents of Ikorodu would not regret it.
“For this coming LG elections in Ikorodu, our party is not participating. We don’t have candidates.
“The forthcoming LG elections will be full of dramas as usual and surprises, though, we are not expecting the election to be free and fair, because as a party and IPAC as a body, we have raised a lot of issues with LASIEC, which have not been resolved till now. Even, the appointment of the LASIEC chairperson is questionable”, he alleged.
