Former Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) president Rotimi Akeredolu is on a collision course with the national leader of his party, Bola Ahmed Tinubu over the latter’s reported endorsement of a candidate for the All Progressives Congress (APC)’s ticket in the upcoming governorship election in Ondo state.  Akeredolu who was the governorship candidate of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) four years ago, said in a radio interview in Akure that Tinubu had never kept his words and that the man, reputed for his political sagacity, had lost the place of a national leader by taking sides in the Ondo APC primary contest.

Akeredolu wants to run for governor again, under the APC, the new party that emerged after the former platform under which he vied in 2012 merged with other parties.

Mr Akeredolu, while responding to questions on the crowded race, was quoted by media men who monitored the interview as saying; ‘’for the national leader to have endorsed any candidate in our party he has lost the place of National leader of the party.”

But the elite lawyer pushed back when he was reminded of being equally unduly favoured by the same Tinubu in 2012, when he was given the ticket of ACN, a party Tinubu built from scratch in Lagos and exported to five of the six South Western states and Edo, a state in the South South region. Akeredolu said it was God who chose him in 2012, not Tinubu. ”I was endorsed by God in 2012 , not by Tinubu. All stakeholders decided I should be the candidate.’’