Jesutega Onokpasa, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has alleged that some appointees of President Bola Tinubu wishing that he will not live up to 2027 are behind the ordeals of former Governors Nasir el-Rufai and Yahaya Bello of Kaduna and Kogi states, respectively.
This was as he also claimed that those appointees were plotting to succeed Tinubu before the end of his first term tenure for their selfish reasons.
Onokpasa, a lawyer and former member of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, lamented the alleged hypocrisy, pull him down mentality and anti-party activities going on in the governing party.
He laid curses on those he accused of wishing Tinubu dead, saying, “If they don’t repent, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu will attend their funeral.”
Onokpasa stated in a video clip, where he was seen addressing party members on the allegation of corruption by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) against former Governor Bello and the continued attack on former Governor el-Rufai, stating that they were plans mapped out by these individuals to perfect their plans.
He expressed concern over what he described as ill-treatments, selective prosecution and hounding meted out on some prominent chieftains of the party since the Tinubu emerged as the president.
Onokpasa alleged that the particular appointees in the Tinubu administration were behind the ordeals of el-Rufai, Bello and a former governor of Kano State, Alhaji Abdullahi Ganduje, in order to perfect their succession plans, wishing that the president would no longer be around by 2027.
Referring to a particular appointee of Tinubu whose name he did not mentioned, the APC chieftain said: “You drove el-Rufai away, you started hounding Ganduje. Although there are other things involved, you started attacking Yahaya Bello.
“What did you do? You don’t have mandate my friend. You are just an appointee… You think we don’t know what is going on?
“Listen, Asiwaju [the president] is a child of God. Asiwaju will rule this country for eight complete years. There is nothing anybody can do about that.
“He will rule this first four years. He will so perform that Nigerians, again, will vote for him and next time around, we will win a majority of the total votes cast.
“So, all these your satanic plans, plotting that our president will not make it to 2027, you are wasting your time. Get that through your head.”
A die-hard loyalist of President Tinubu, he also decried what he called the attitude of “using and dumping” people who worked for the victory of the president in 2023, while those who were against him were being given priorities “over authentic supporters and genuine batists.”
Onokpasa, who was also a member of the APC Presidential Legal Team and Chairman, Tinubu Media Support Group, said: “Of recent concern to me is the case of my younger brother, the former governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Bello.
“In this party, we have had our brother, the former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, basically chased out of our party despite what he did for us to make us win.
“Now, it is Yahaya Bello. A few weeks or months ago, it was our National Chairman, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje that was basically almost being chased from our party.”
He berated those he said were behind the ugly trend and who he claimed were arrogating powers to themselves at the detriment of the well-being of President Tinubu
He warned them to desist from their alleged plans. He said: “Listen, we cannot tolerate such nonsense in a party. Let everybody in this party come to his senses.
“We know how we won election. We won election because of the grace of God, because the grace of God is upon our President, Asiwaju. We won election with the lowest margin.
“This our government has the lowest margin since 1999. We won with less than 40 per cent of the votes. In every other election, someone had won with 50 per cent of the votes.
“Everybody that contributed to our victory is important to me, because me, I am a fanatical batist. This is the way I see Bola Tinubu’s administration.
“Bola Tinubu is a child of grace. The way I see it, God wants Bola Tinubu to be our president and we need him to be our president for eight years.
“What we should all square up to right now is a question of…there is no need to beat about the bush. There are people in our party who don’t believe in our president. For whatever reason they feel, I don’t know where they went to. That is their headache.”
He cautioned those wishing Tinubu dead, stressing that the president would live and make it beyond 2027.
“Even after that eight years, he will become an elder statesman for many years after that and all of you doing this rubbish, if you don’t repent, Asiwaju will attend all of your funerals. I am the one that is saying it,” he added.
On the controversy surrounding the allegation by the efcc against former Governor Yahaya Bello, Onokpasa said it should be left for the court to decide.
“Nobody is supporting corruption. However, we must fight corruption according to Law. You will not have a personal differences with somebody and then you use the instrumentality of office to torment that person. We will not tolerate that in this party. We must not.
“I am very proud of Yahaya Bello, Yahaya Bello helped Asiwaju to win thr election. Anybody who helped Asiwaju to win the election is my brother,” he said.
