Omolosho Fatai & Adebayo Fajinmi
Tells party to refund monies to candidates who step down
As the convention of the All Progressives Congress approaches reality, President Muhammadu Buhari, has ordered the party to refund the monies used in buying nomination forms to candidates who would step down as he backed consensus candidates ahead of the Saturday convention.
Buhari disclosed this during a meeting with APC governors in Abuja on Wednesday.
He said that the governors should make sure that all people seeking office into the National Working Committee emerge through consensus.
He, therefore, gave the governors 24 hours ultimatum to come up a list of the candidates for all the positions ahead of the convention.
He said, “I have already given my own input and other recommendations on the way forward in both my February 25, 2022 meeting with the Chairman of the Caretaker Extraordinary Convention Committee and my March 13, 2022 letter to the chairman of the APC Governors Forum.
“Your Excellencies. With the convention only two days away, I implore you to come together and sort out all the remaining party positions so that within the next 24 hours we can arrive at a unity list which we can take to the convention.
“Finally all those who have bought forms indicating interest and have been dropped should have their money refunded without delay.”
The president also appealed to the governors to put the interest of the party ahead of theirs as it would be disastrous for the Peoples Democratic Party to hijack the power in 2023.
Buhari who said the APC had done well in the last seven years despite the economic challenges, believed the party will come victorious in 2023 general elections.
He said, “It will be a very sad and regrettable development if these manifest gains are frittered away as a result of internal dissent and rivalry. We must avoid narrow focus and inordinate personal ambitions at the expense of our party’s common good. We must stop frivolous and diversionary litigation when the party’s reconciliation processes are available for settling disputes.
“We must restore sanity and purpose in the affairs of our party and lead ourselves to victory and safety.
“As I remarked when I met Your Excellencies on February 22, our aim must be to hand over to an APC government at the centre and the great majority of states. We must not, by default, allow the PDP to get its dirty hands on the Government again and return us to the Stone Age.”
This is coming after leadership tussle hit the party earlier this month as Governor of Niger state, Sani Bello took over the leadership of the party. The process that Independent National Electoral Commission had disregarded.
APC was not meant to be an abiding political party
As the struggle for the soul of the party continues within the bigwigs of the party, a Nigerian-American professor, and media scholar, Farooq Kperogi maintained that APC was never meant to be an abiding political party.
He said, “that APC was never meant to be an abiding political party. It’s an emergency political ladder hurriedly constructed to whack Goodluck Jonathan out of power and to help Buhari to climb to power– and stay in it.
“It has served its purpose and, with Buhari almost out of power, is about to outlive its usefulness.
“People who want to use the same APC ladder to climb to power are finding out that it was designed to be used only once by Buhari and thrown away thereafter. That’s why it’s unraveling.”
