The last is yet to be heard about the controversy that rocked the plan by President Bola Tinubu to reconstitute the boards of federal agencies that were dissolved about two months ago except statutory ones, which put the Chief of Staff to the President, Rt. Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, in the eye of the storm.
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The development, it was learnt, nearly made Gbajabiamila, the immediate past Speaker of the House of Representatives, and one who spent almost two decades in the House, to almost lose his hard-earned reputation following the allegation of corruption against him by some online media outfits.
His traducers had gone to town with the story of kickbacks being collected for appointments into juicy boards and agencies and that led to the President taking the responsibility from the former Speaker.
However, contrary to that claim which caused Gbajabiamila nightmare, sources revealed that the allegation against Gbajabiamila was not true, but an outcome of high wire politics deeply connected to the governorship election in Bayelsa State scheduled for November 11.
According to the sources, a governorship candidate concocted and hung the bribery allegation story on the Chief of Staff by planting it in the media and in the security circle as a deliberate plot to whittle down what they fear as Gbajabiamila’s emerging influence in the Presidential Vila, which the governorship candidate considered as a threat to his ambition.
A source close to the seat of power said the governorship candidate had approached the Chief of Staff to prevail on Mr President to throw his weight behind him to win the governorship election with what they flaunt as ‘Federal Might’.
The offence of Gbajabiamila, it was gathered, is that he insisted that Mr. President is a democrat and he would not mislead him to interfere with the democratic process in Bayelsa, saying democracy is what the President fought for all through his political life.
Gbajabiamila’s response, which reportedly did not go down well with the said politician, led him to resort to planting the blackmail story against the Chief of Staff for the purpose of sowing a seed of discord between Gbajabiamila and Tinubu which was hatched in connivance with certain anti-Gbajabiamila elements in the Villa allegedly jealous of his rising political influence.
According to the sources, the same politician had adopted similar desperate strategies in planting blackmail stories against principal officers at the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to cause disaffection so that he would have his way in the November 11 election.
A source close to the National Chairman of INEC disclosed that the candidate is doing everything possible to influence him to deploy top officers such as Administrative Secretary, Heads of Legal and ICT etc that would do his bidding during the poll.
At a recent meeting of the leadership of INEC to appraise preparations for the coming governorship polls in the country, when the issue of Bayelsa came up, majority of the National Commissioners of INEC spoke against any form of deployment of their men in Bayelsa, stating that those on ground have demonstrated strength of character, honesty, and fairness in all the elections so far conducted in the state to the admiration of all.
Meanwhile, the said governorship candidate is reportedly not leaving any stone unturned to drag Tinubu into his desperate plot to win at all costs because he does not have the grassroots appeal to win the election.
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