2015: ‘No consensus guber candidate for Oyo PDP’

Achieftain of Peo­ples Democratic Party (PDP) in Oyo State, Al­haji AbdulRasheed Olopoenia, has said no consensus candidate has been chosen for the par­ty ahead of next year’s governorship election in the state.
Olopoenia, who was reacting to rumours mak­ing the rounds that a can­didate had been chosen by the party’s national secre­tariat in Abuja, said the PDP was not in the habit of picking consensus can­didates for governorship posts.
He said the party had no fewer than 10 gover­norship aspirants in the state including a former governor of the state, Otunba Adebayo Alao-Akala.
He warned members of the party promoting the ‘falsehood’ to desist from it to avoid anything that could jeopardise the peace existing in the party.
He frowned on the action of a member of the National Assembly, whom he alleged had told party chairmen in the lo­cal governments that the PDP national secretariat had chosen Senator Tes­lim Folarin as the gover­norship candidate.
Noting that the party’s gubernatorial candidate would emerge after the primary elections due to hold in October , Olopoe­nia warned the senator to be mindful of his actions which he described as risky to the party’s unity.
He appealed to the na­tional body of the party to call the lawmaker to order before he took the party back to its faction­alisation crisis.