A youth group, Concerned Ifelodun Youth has alleged that the Deputy Governor of Kwara State, Kayode Alabi of instigating religious crisis in the state.
This allegation was contained in a statement signed by the group’s coordinator, Oladunjoye Samuel and made available to newsmen in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital on Friday.
The group further alleged that most of the actions of the deputy governor are laced with religious colouration, thereby placing the state on a timed bomb.
They stated that the deputy governor had been secretly accusing the governor of not carrying him along when it comes to decision-making.
The statement read, “The deputy governor that is supposed to be supportive to your Excellency in his drive to change the Kwara narrative and build a better Kwara with solid foundation is only interested in causing religious crises where there is none. It is getting clearer that Elder Kayode Alabi has a hand in the recent Ijab crisis that erupted between the ever-peaceful Christian community and their relatively tolerant majority muslims in the state by instigating unsuspecting Kwarans that have lived together for decades harmoniously irrespective of their religious inclination.
“Your excellency sir, without mincing words, we have been watching the conduct of Elder Kayode Alabi closely few months after the election and we can categorically put it to your excellency that there is a ticking religion crisis time bomb that is about to explode which may end up reversing us back several years if nothing is done to address it at this moment. It is worthy to note that if the acclaimed Islamic sect known as Boko haram were curbed in time, we wouldn’t have experienced the insurgency that has consumed thousands of innocent Nigerians for the past 10 years in one of the most peaceful geopolitical zones in Nigeria which was later spread to other parts of Nigeria.
“We have been experiencing a very peaceful coexistence in Kwara State most especially in Kwara South since the existence of the larger Kwara which include the present-day Kogi and some parts of Niger State, there is no single-family in Kwara South where you wouldn’t find at least a Christian and hardly could you differentiate the Muslims from the Christians in Kwara south. We mostly choose people on merit in Ifelodun local government irrespective of their religion, tribe, or social inclination, not until the emergence of this government that we started observing that Elder Kayode Alabi is a religious fanatic who is known to be very deceitful in his conduct with Kwarans, most especially Kwara south as a whole. He is very fond of claiming that he is only a figurehead in the government and that he hardly understands the governor who oversees all political or non-political appointments without consulting him for inputs but at the end of our independent findings we were able to deduce that he has his own ways of influencing appointments for Christians because he is not always comfortable with promoting deserving Muslims indigents for appointments but also do all he could to stop their appointments using the unsuspecting Christian Association of Nigeria as a cover-up.
“We observed that during the TIC appointments in Ifelodun, he ensured that a very strong grassroots politician from Ora was denied appointment as a TIC member because he is a Muslim and under the pretext that CAN is interested, but an unknown Christian that is not known in the struggle of taking back Kwara from Saraki was appointed instead.
“80% of appointments so far into various positions in Ifelodun local government are mostly Christians and we once heard him asked one of our members he thinks is a Christian why the two house of assembly members from Ifelodun would be Muslims, Although he told him instantly that it is an elected position which is open to everyone to contest and whomsoever emerges from the rigorous election will return elected irrespective of their religious inclination.
“We also heard from a credible source that he is seriously rooting for the return of the erstwhile commissioner that was relieved in December partly because she is a Christian and because he sees her secretly.
“In a latest development, he wrote a letter to the Ministry of Youths and sports under the pretext that the Christian Association of Nigeria is interested in the candidature of a Christian lady to represent Kwara South in the youths parliament even though he knows that the previous Youths parliament from Kwara south is a lady and Kwara North is next to produce a lady in the Youths parliament while the deserving youth that passed the screening and is qualified was screened out because he is not a Christian.
“We believe that the Christian Association of Nigeria in Kwara have always been conducting themselves as noblemen and women of God that will never engage in partisanship and we would never allow the deputy Governor to put the association in the mud.
The group urged the governor to investigate the activities of the Deputy Governor, asking him to call his deputy to order.