Progressives Congress, Chief Bisi Akande, has called
on President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC
governors to halt the party’s drift.
Akande, in a statement, on Sunday, warned that the
ongoing crisis afflicting the party was capable of
jeopardising the chances of the APC in 2019.
He said, “Now that the whole conspiracy has blown
open, it is doubtful if the present institutions of party
leadership can muster the required capacity to arrest
the drift.
“It is my opinion that President Buhari, and the APC
governors should now see the APC as a rocking
platform that may not be strong enough again to
carry them to political victory in 2019 and they should
quickly begin a joint damage control effort to
reconstruct the party in its claim to bring about the
promised change before the party’s shortcomings
begin to aggravate the challenges of governance in
their hands.”
Condemning the crisis rocking the country’s National
Assembly, Akande alleged that “numerous among
those calling themselves businessmen in Nigeria are
like leeches sucking from the nation’s blood largely
through various governments and particularly
through the Nigerian Federal Government.
“While all these schisms were going on in the APC,
those who were jittery of Buhari’s constant threat of
anti-corruption’s battle began to encourage and
finance rebellions against the APC democratic
positions which led to the emergence of Senator
Bukola Saraki as the candidate of the PDP tendencies
inside and outside the APC.”
The Ila-Orangun-born political chieftain recalled that,
“With the air of oneness, APC went ahead to conduct
primaries to select candidates for state governors
and Houses of Assembly and for the Presidency and
the National Assembly.
“After the elections which saw APC to victory all
round, a meeting was reported to have been held by
certain old new-PDP leaders in a Peoples Democratic
Party (chieftain’s house) in Abuja to review what
should be their share in this new Buhari’s
government and resolved to seek collaboration with
the PDP with a view to hijacking the National
Assembly and, having got rid of Goodluck Jonathan,
with an ultimate aim of resuscitating the PDP as their
future political platform.”
The statement read in part, “Unknown to most APC
members, while Senator Bukola Saraki was being
adopted as the candidate for Senate President by
certain old new-PDP tendencies, the theory was being
propagated that, like in most presidential democracy,
the APC minority leaders in the old National
Assembly (i.e George Akume for the Senate and Femi
Gbajabiamila for the House of Representatives)
should automatically become Senate President and
Speaker respectively now that the APC has the
majority.
“Certain leaders felt that most past Senate Presidents
had come from Benue State which Akume
represented and that Benue State should be made to
assume the traditional home of all senate presidents.
At the same time, certain senators were clamouring
for one of the most ranking senators anywhere
outside the North-west zone that produced the
President. That was how Ahmed Lawan who had
been in the House of Representatives for eight years
and in the Senate for another eight years emerged as
the candidate for the senate president
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