Demand for Oshiomhole’s resignation personal, PGF chief says after governors deny him

The Director-General of the Progressives Governors’ Forum (PGF), Salihu Lukman, said on Thursday that his demand for the resignation of the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, was personal.

He made the clarification at a media briefing in Abuja, after APC governors claimed that the call for Oshiomhole’s resignation did not emanate from them.

The PGF director-general had in the statement asked the APC national chairman to either convene a meeting of the party National Executive Council (NEC) to address the perceived crisis in Edo State or resign from the position.

But the governors had reportedly said Lukman was on “his personally-sponsored errand.”

But at the Thursday’s briefing, the PGF director-general reaffirmed his call for Oshiomhole’s resignation if he was not ready to convene the NEC meeting.

He said: “The issue here is that every day the NWC, under Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, continues to run the affairs of the party, without convening NEC meetings, it is working illegally.

“If you read the (Oshiomhole’s inaugural) speech, he made the commitment that he would run the affairs of the party based on the constitution. Now, the last time we had a NEC meeting was in August 2018.

“By the constitution, the NWC, as an administrative organ, derives its powers from the decisions of superior organs.

“I’m hoping that concerning the judgment about the Bayelsa deputy governorship, appropriate steps will be taken to vacate the judgment. Has that happened? It has not.

“We are living with the danger of Zamfara being reenacted. We can win the election in Bayelsa and then court judgment will come later to say we didn’t have a candidate.

“My point is that the Comrade Adams Oshiomhole that I know is a field worker. By now Comrade Adams would have been in Bayelsa, holding meetings with aggrieved parties to reconcile them.

“Since he became the national chairman of the party, I’m not sure he has visited any state to sit down to reconcile aggrieved parties.

READ ALSO: BAYELSA: We’ve now secured a stay of execution of order barring our guber candidate —APC Chieftain

“My final word is that, and it is an appeal to Comrade Adams again, he should be fair to President Buhari.

“President Buhari has shown that he’s not interested in interfering with party affairs and he has demonstrated full confidence in the ability of party leaders to manage the party. It will amount to creating a distraction to be having problems that the party allows lingering.

“My final appeal will be that all our party leaders need to rise and insist that a National Executive Council meeting needs to be convened. A situation where affairs of the party are run almost like a contest of mob has to stop.”

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