I have no plan to return as APC chairman —Oshiomhole

The immediate past National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, on Monday evening dismissed insinuations that he was planning to return to the position he vacated in July.

In a chat with State House correspondents after he held a closed-door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Oshiomhole said he was not interested in re-contesting for the position.

The APC National Executive Committee (NEC) had last month dissolved the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) headed by the former Edo State governor in a bid to reposition the party for future challenges.

At the meeting attended by President Buhari and other party chieftains, the NEC set up a national caretaker committee headed by the Yobe State governor, Mai Buni, to manage the party for six months.

During Monday’s chat with journalists, Oshiomhole added that his central role in the campaign for the APC governorship candidate, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, had nothing to do with such interest.

He said: “You see, what I want the media to interrogate is: when I was removed as national chairman, Edo was APC. So, do I have to win Edo to become the chairman? Do I look so unemployed? I’m 68.

“So, what they don’t understand is that it is not the office of chairman that made me who I am.

“It is my pedigree from my days as labourer in the textile industry to be the general secretary of textile workers all over Nigeria and becoming the president of NLC.

“There is no village I go to that people do not know me.

READ ALSO: Oshiomhole visits Buhari in Aso Rock

“It is this that I used to override the godfathers in Edo State for two consecutive terms and even got the governor elected through elections, no violence, before becoming the national chairman.

“So, if you remove the office…it’s like our president now, though I cannot compare myself to him.

“But it is like President Muhammadu Buhari, by 2023, when his tenure would have elapsed as President.

“But those who believe in him, in 2024 and beyond, each time they see him, that trust they have in him will always be there.

“He bonds with the people, that bond was not created by the fact that he is the president, in fact he became the president because of that bond.

“So, it takes an empty brain to suggest that I only want to stage a comeback to become the national chairman. For what? To go and do a reset?

“So, my attitude is not to reply the noise.”

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