APC govs resolve rift, agree on new congress

authorityngr.com

Apr 4, 2018 1:00 PM

Governors of the All Progressive Congress (APC) whose meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday ended in a stalemate, have reconvened and finally agreed to rest the issue of tenure elongation, and get set for fresh elections and congresses to produce new party leaders.

They are now set to announce soon the composition of committees to organise the congresses and convention as well as a timetable for them, having affirmed that they would abide by the party’s and country’s constitutions as they plan ahead for the 2018 general elections.

The governors met last night and brought their resolutions to Buhari at a meeting in his office this morning after which they briefed State House correspondents.

At the briefing were the governors of Zamfara, Abdulazeez Yari; Plateau, Simon Lalong; Imo, Rochas Okorocha; Kano, Abdullahi Ganduje and Ogun, Ibikunle Amosun.

Yari said: “Gentlemen of the press, you know yesterday we left you in the dark after the meeting and today we have seen so many captions that there is disagreement between the governors over the issue of party Chairman or about the party leadership. No.

“We had a meeting with Mr. President yesterday (Tuesday), and we extended the meeting to night and we followed up with the consultations with the President now.

“We consulted and all the 24 governors of the APC are on the same page with Mr. President that we are going to respect our party constitution, we are going to respect the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Therefore, we collectively agreed that we will have congresses at all levels – Local – State and National.

“And the committee set up by the National Secretariat of our party headed by governor of Plateau State, is presenting its report later today. The governors are also meeting with the working committee today so that we come up with convention committee names as well as timetable of the election.

“So, there is no deadlock in our meeting, we have progressed and very soon you will have the names of the convention committee members as well as the timetable.”

Okorocha on his part said, “I just want to let you know that there is no crisis in the APC at all. And we want to use this opportunity to advise the media operatives to stop spreading rumours of crisis in APC.

“There is no single crisis in APC. The issue was one of people who believed that we did not have enough time to organize a party congress and run election.

“Some people felt that it was a good idea but the most important thing is that, if we do that we will be contravening both our party constitution and the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. That is the major issue that we have that they call crisis. We do not have virus.

“This morning we met with Mr. President to fine-tune issues, one regarding the congress and we have resolved that the congresses at all levels and the Chairman of the elongation committee, is also fine-tuning the arrangement in the same line. To this effect, the convention committee will be set out, it will be announced.

“But let me correct one impression, the issue of congress and convention does not mean that the previous people who have served the party have done badly. And it does not m an that they cannot come back or that they cannot re-contest, that is not it.

“We are simply saying that their tenure has ended and those who wish to re-contest can re-contest and can be elected into our party structure. So we are all one as family and we are set to go for 2019 elections in victory.”