March 11 Lagos guber: Jandor dismisses alliance with Labour Party

…says ‘No point sitting on a keg of gunpowder’

Governorship candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP in Lagos State, Abdul-Azeez Adediran, popular as Jandor, has dismissed possibility of forming an alliance with his counterpart of the Labour Party, LP, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour.

There have been speculations that Labour Party is working towards forming an alliance to ouster the ruling party in the state following the LP’s unprecedented victory in the February 25 presidential poll in the state.

However, Jandor has laid the speculations to rest, saying when his “project” started years ago, it was beyond a desire to become governor.

Jandor stated this while speaking in a live interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Monday.

He said, “If it’s to be governor, I could have been governor where I was coming from, but I chose this route.”

The PDP governorship candidate noted that when talks of an alliance began “flying around,” the PDP tabled the matter, “even though we [Gbadebo and I] haven’t sat together to discuss it”.

He added, “We came ourselves to look at the issue and say, ‘Within us, what do we want to do? Do we want to put an end to a dynasty that has held us by the jugular for over two decades? Where do we go from here?’”

According to him, the party decided to analyse every issue critically.

He stated further, “We now discovered that the Labour Party candidate still has a case on his candidacy which is currently at the Supreme Court, we looked at it again that the Labour Party candidate also has an issue with Section 77 of the Electoral Act;

“Which says if you’re leaving a particular party to another one, you must have been there, at least, for one month, that is, the party register would have been with INEC 30 days before that party primary.”

Jandor noted that legal issue could come up in post-election litigation, saying he would rather not be “sitting on a keg of gunpowder”.

He added, “For us, we don’t have a problem, we would have said [to Rhodes-Vivour], ‘Go [on], let’s just take this [APC] government.

“But knowing full well who we’re dealing with; we know the kind of character we’re dealing with, we know what can happen – there’s no point sitting on a keg of gunpowder.

“So, for us, we want an alliance; we don’t have any issue with it. But we must put our best foot forward. We must make sure that we go into this election without any snag whatsoever.”