Segun James
As the race for the 2023 general election heats up, former Lagos Commissioner for Energy and Mineral Resources, Wale Oluwo, has submitted his nomination and expression of interest forms for the governorship ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos.
The submission is the first direct challenge to the endorsement of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu by the national leader of the party and presidential aspirant, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Oluwo, an ally of former Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, submitted his forms to the party on Wednesday at the International Conference Centre, Abuja. As at May 10, 2022, the deadline set by the APC before the extension of the sale of forms, only Sanwo-Olu had purchased the forms to contest the APC governorship ticket in Lagos.
Oluwo, chairman of the Akinwunmi Ambode Campaign Organisation, was the only member of the state executive council to stand by the former governor at the height of his face-off with the party’s leadership in his unsuccessful attempt to clinch the APC ticket for the second term in 2019.
He is from Ibeju-Lekki. Oluwo vowed to defeat the incumbent governor at the governorship primary election later this month and promised that governance in Lagos would no longer be business as usual.
Apart from Oluwo and Sanwo-Olu, another ally of Tinubu, Mustapha Olorunfunmi, had reportedly purchased the nomination forms but had yet to submit them.
Sanwo-Olu was recently endorsed by the Governor’s Advisory Council (GAC), considered the highest advisory organ of the party in Lagos. Tinubu heads the GAC.
Many have however continued to question the legality of GAC, since there is no provision for such in the APC constitution. They described it an amorphous and illegal body the former governor used to do his political bidding, particular to intimidate sitting governors in the state. “Tinubu alone decides is a member of the council, he dissolves and constitutes it at will,” analysts continue to out.
