The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Oyo State from across the 33 local government areas of the state converged on Ibadan on to chart a new course ahead of the 2023 general election.
At a meeting, the stakeholders made up of elders, leaders and members, lamented the internal crisis which has been affecting the party since last year and resolve to guard against the disintegration of the party.
Speakers at the gathering expressed optimism about the party reclaiming power from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2023 while they urged all concerned to give room for genuine reconciliation.
A leader from Ibadan City, who is a former member of the State Working Committee of the APC, Alhaji Kayode Adanla, said the meeting was at the instance of a gubernatorial aspirant who felt the need to bring together stakeholders from all the groups and tendencies with a view to establishing a new order of peace, unity and cooperation.
He said: “It was a governorship aspirant of our party, Mr Abisoye Fagade, who brought the idea of this meeting when he realised that the in-fighting among the gladiators was taking more time than necessary to abate.
“He went further to meet a number of leaders who suggested that we should find a way of calling a meeting of this nature and with the calibre of people that attended this meeting, it is safe to say that the current crisis in our party is surmountable.
Meanwhile, there cannot be peace in the absence of justice and it is on this premise that we are calling on those who have done one wrong or the other against a fellow progressive to allow reason to prevail as it is expected that this category of people would eschew every trait of selfishness and place the interest of the party above their own.”
In a remark, the founder of Oyo-Si-Maa-Dun Foundation and a gubernatorial aspirant of the APC who sponsored the meeting, Mr Abisoye Fagade, said the opposition party had a good chance to return to power in the state in 2023 if all stakeholders were ready to play the game according to the rule.