The incumbent Deputy Governor of Lagos State, Kadri Obafemi Hamzat, has boasted that he will be the next governor of the state regardless of the mode of primary election the stakeholders resolve to adopt in electing the party’s candidate.
He spoke to newsmen in Abuja after appearing before the national leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the compulsory screening process on Saturday.
He, however, warned that whatever primary mode the ruling party decides to adopt, whether direct or consensus, efforts must be made to ensure that it is beneficial to the generality of the party’s stakeholders.
Asked which type of primary would be favourable to him, he said: “I am at home, I am very comfortable. I am absolutely comfortable. But we will see. That is the essence. It is for our citizens, our party members.”
“It is going to be their choice, but I am confident that at the end of the day, not only that, I will be the next governor of Lagos State,” he said.
Hamzat, who was at one time a commissioner in Lagos, also explained the level of scrutiny aspirants were subjected to. He said: “The essence is to make sure that your credentials are correct.”
“They validate everything you submitted to make sure there are no issues. What we submitted before, they validated, and then they will ask you questions.
“So, that is the process, just to make sure that everything that you put down on paper is actually true, and to ensure that you have been a member of the party for some time. They check everything, and that is what happened inside there,” he said.
Explaining further, he said: “It is a function of what you write, and then they want to corroborate it. For example, if you say you have been something, if they have checked it, then they don’t need to actually ask you again.
“In my own case, everything I have written was corroborated and they just said, ‘Explain this, explain that. You were a Commissioner for Works, what did you do? You were Commissioner, Deputy Governor, what did you do?’ Those are just the questions,” he said.
