APC crisis festers as party calls govs Amosun, Okorocha, Yari bad losers

Efforts aimed at managing the negative fallout from the primaries of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) appear to have completely failed, with the national leadership of the party describing the governors of Ogun State, Ibikunle Amosun; Imo State, Rochas Okorocha and Zamfara State, Aldulaziz Yari as bad losers.

The party is also making frantic efforts at rallying against the alleged planned removal of its National Chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, who many have accused of being behind the crisis in the party.

The party’s leadership also accused the governors of seeking to circumvent the democratic process to project their interests.

Governors Okorocha and Amosun are angry that the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party failed to recognize their preferred candidates as the governorship candidates of the APC for the 2019 general elections while in Zamfara, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has insisted that the party cannot field candidates for the 2019 elections after the state chapter failed to conduct primaries before the expiration of the deadline set by it.

The logjam over who the candidates of the party are in the states has led to growing campaign against Oshiomhole, with many calling for his sack.

Governors Amosun specifically fingered Oshiomhole, National Leader of the party, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and a former governor of Ogun State, Olusegun Osoba as those behind the failure of the party to recognize his candidate.

Joining the camp of angry governors on Wednesday, the governor of Ondo State, Rotimi Akeredolu, also said that the APC primaries has exposed the incompetence of the party’s national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole.

Reacting to the gale of disaffections from the governors and the accusations leveled against the National Chairman of the party, the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, in a session with correspondents in Abuja on Wednesday, dismissed the allegations against Oshiomhole and the national leadership as a fallout of the failure of some of the governors and chieftains to project their interests in the party.

Issa-Onilu who spoke about the issues raised against Oshiomhole and the leadership according to the states and personalities involved, said: “It is a straight forward case. If we speak to the merit of this case, the whole world saw it, the visuals were everywhere, where the Ogun State governor gathered some aspirants, stakeholders and said clearly, there won’t be primaries and right there he pointed at who the next governorship, senatorial, and House of Representatives candidates would be. He named himself the next senatorial candidate.

“Even if they have accepted those people, it is against the procedure, especially for a governor to openly say a thing like that.

“It was clearly stated the party gave two options which is the direct and indirect primaries and you are to have stakeholders’ meetings where majority will decide.

Read also: Akeredolu hits Oshiomhole hard, says he’s incompetent, with penchant for banditry, impunity

“In the case of Ogun, after that exercise failed they tried to hand-pick who will be what, they sent a letter that they have agreed on direct primary and the party has no choice than to endorse what they want.

“On the day they all came for screening including the governor, he suddenly left with other aspirants and returned to Abeokuta; gathered some people and sent back to the NWC that they wanted indirect primary and the other aspirants said we were all here together, that they didn’t know when this change was made.

“Meanwhile, someone had gone to court and the court had barred the state executive from anything to do with the party but we all saw on national television where the Governor and the state executive actually conducted their own primary and the process threw up the governor’s preferred candidate.

“It was the SSG in Ogun State, who was reading the result until it occurred to him that he had no power to announce the names. So he handed over to the state chairman of the party who also shouldn’t have done that – he is statutorily barred, the court had told him not to participate in the primary. Secondly, the state chairman has no power to conduct primary; that power resides with the NWC.

“So whatever the governor did was self-help and there is no provision for self-help in the party’s constitution. Eventually the NWC panel constituted to conduct the primary went to Abeokuta and did the primary. The governor’s preferred candidate chose not to participate in that exercise. So the party stands by the result of that primary it conducted in Ogun state.

“The governor has done his best to get validation for his self-help. That is not possible. The first thing he did was to start saying things that made it look like something wrong has happened when nothing of such has happened.

“Secondly, he took some monarchs to meet the president. I am surprised because someone like him, with due respect, should have understood the nature of the President we have; that no matter how close you are to him, he will listen to you but he will ask for the rules to be followed.

“So, the next thing we had, he was looking for whom to blame, and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and Chief Segun Osoba readily came to his mind and he blamed them for that. The question to ask is whether they were the ones who gave directive to him to organise his own primaries or they were the ones who instructed him not to participate in the primaries or his candidate not to participate in primaries the party organised. Against the background of the alleged procedural faults of Governor Amosun, the party spokesman put some posers to Governor Amosun.

“Am I asking for what is fair? Am I not putting the party in a position to ask them to do what’s wrong? Those are the questions we expect the Governor of Ogun State to ask himself. He needs to self-appraise, look at the actions he has taken and come to the conclusion that he’s taking the wrong route.”

On the situation in Kaduna State that led to the defection of Senator Shehu Sani, Issa-Onilu said:: “It was the outcome of the primary, properly conducted. The party tried to protect its members in the National Assembly for obvious reasons, following what has been going on at the National Assembly.

“We know the carrots that had been dangled at them. We have a responsibility to ensure that we have a grip on the legislative arm of government so that we can run a smooth government.

“The initial effort of the party did not get the blessing of other people in that area who are also entitled to bid for positions. The primaries were eventually conducted, Senator Shehu Sani opted out; he relied on the earlier decision.

“At the end of the day, no matter what plan you have, even though you are acting on expediency, rule of law, democracy will prevail. It was democracy that prevailed in Kaduna.

On Zamfara State, the APC spokesman said: “We submitted list of candidates for legislative elections in Zamfara State. If INEC did not take it, it is a different thing. We have a right to submit and INEC has the legal responsibility to receive. INEC cannot disqualify candidates; we all know that. We have said clearly that whatever claims INEC is making is neither correct nor a true representation of what happened and we will continue to take progressive steps to ensure that INEC does what is right.”

For Imo State, Issa-Onilu put the situation thus: “The issue of submission of governorship candidates to INEC falls due on November 2nd, so we haven’t reached the stage of where we will submit names or beat the deadline. You are aware that there was a court action challenging the Imo governorship primary election. The position of the party is that whatever court judgement, good or bad, we must comply with it. We will only decide who will be APC’s governorship candidate for Imo State by November 2nd.”

Reacting to the charge of nepotism leveled against Oshiomhole in the constitution of the party’s electoral panels by the Director General of the Voice of Nigeria, Osita Okechukwu, the party said it was false.

Claiming that Okechukwu’s outbursts flowed from his failure to pick the Enugu West senatorial ticket, Issa-Onilu said: “He has a right to ventilate his anger and it is for the party to also listen to him. He may have gone overboard, making all sorts of unfounded allegations but you also have to understand the situation that he is in now; he lost out.

“There would be someone to blame in such a situation so he has picked on the National Chairman unfortunately. But the chairman has no blame in this. If you have issues with the process, you can complain about the process. We have an appeal panel, you could take recourse to that.

“If he does have very good reasons to have redress, he would get that but he has chosen to go that path (media) which is quite unfortunate. It is not everybody who has lost an election that has the capacity to soak it in. Some must express themselves in the way Osita Okechukwu has chosen to go about it. It is not about the National Chairman like I have said, it is about the fact that he is a party to the dispute and in such a situation, not everybody would win; some must lose. He lost it in his reaction to it, everything he said was completely at variance with the real situation.

“There are five members for each state on the panel (which conducted the primary) we have 36 states and the FCT for the National Assembly and he (Osita Okechukwu) mentioned only nine panel chairs (from Edo state). Definitely, the others are from some (other) states. By the time you add up the figures, you find out that the appointment of nine cannot be called nepotism in a situation where you have 36 states. When you pick what suits your cause that is what he has done but by the time all the facts are laid there are no issues. Everything boils down to the fact that he lost out and he is not happy about it, there must be a culprit, somebody must be blamed for it.”

 

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