National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, has vowed that the leadership of the ruling party would not surrender its functions to influential stakeholders in the party, especially governors.
Oshiomhole, who dismissed insinuations in some quarters that he was leading APC to its doom, however assured that he would lead party to victory in the next year’s election.
The APC chairman has been at loggerheads with some governors elected on the platform of the ruling party.
Last Thursday, the party withdrew its support for the candidature of Senator Shehu Sani and picked Uba Sani, candidate of the Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, for Kaduna Central Senatorial District.
Other state governors are also demanding that their candidates be adopted for next year’s election.
In a statement issued on his behalf by Simon Ebegbulem, his Chief Press Secretary, Oshiomhole said the leadership he has provided during the recently-held primary elections was not lacking in integrity and should serve as example in the administration of political parties.
Oshiomhole said if anything, the conduct of APC primaries has sent a very clear message that the party and not pseudo political empires in states, has the power to superintend the primary elections for the nomination of the party’s candidates in the general election.
The party, Oshiomhole said, will not surrender its constitutional functions to any other entity, but will always be ready to moderate the divergent tendencies and mediate among the disparate political camps in the interest of party cohesion.
He assured that under his leadership, APC was in safe hands and the party would march, sure-footedly, to victory in the 2019 general elections.
Oshiomhole said: “This is the overarching mission of the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party under his leadership.
To be clear, Comrade Oshiomhole did not become national chairman of the governing party to bring it down a notch from the pedestal of its 2015 electoral victory let alone to preside over its liquidation.
“Rather, his single-minded goal, from the outset of his declaration of interest in the position, was to deploy his capacity in helping to strengthen and reposition the party as a truly supreme and disciplined political entity.
“Although, it might appear fortuitous to some persons that he became national chairman at the threshold of the 2019 general elections, the truth is that there is no accident in predestination.
“We must appreciate the fact that it has pleased the Almighty God to place him in the saddle of APC leadership at this time for a purpose. The purpose has begun to manifest in its vast flourish and ramifications: instilling discipline, ensuring party supremacy, promoting due process, dealing with impunity and executive arrogance wherever they manifest to undermine intra-party electoral processes in the states.”
Apparently responding to the alleged rift among some members of NWC of the party, Oshiomhole said he never expected that those who cherished and supported the status quo, which he supplanted, would support the current political order in the party.
Oshiomhole said that party supremacy and discipline were two fundamentals, which had been eroded even before the emergence of his leadership.
He lamented that while he was working round the clock, some stakeholders have thrown selfish political agenda into the mix to threaten the building of institutional capacity of the party.
“The suggestion in some quarters, especially by one of the presidential aspirants on the platform of the party, Alhaji Mumakai Unagha, that APC cannot win with Oshiomhole as published in a national daily is therefore unfair, denigrating and baleful of Comrade Oshiomhole’s persona and commitment to a rejuvenated winning machine that the APC typifies.
“The totality of Unagha’s claims, without necessarily addressing them one after the other, tallies with cooked-up narratives being sponsored by some influential stakeholders in their respective states that Comrade Oshiomhole is responsible for all the problems in APC at the moment.
“These influential stakeholders, according to grapevine, have begun to mobilise to pass a no-confidence vote in the leadership of Oshiomhole, having failed to impose their preferred candidates on the party in the nomination process.
“Rather than resort to needless perfidy at the threshold of a general election, we call on them to imbibe the spirit of sportsmanship, bolstered by the fact that the Oshiomhole leadership is propelled more by its interest in propriety in which victory for the party could be grounded. The crime committed by Comrade Oshhiomhole’s leadership is its disdain for impunity and circumvention of due process perpetrated in some of the states at the pleasure of some influential stakeholders.
“Overall, Comrade Oshiomhole has not, since stepping in the saddle, taken any unilateral decision in the running of the party affairs. All decisions, so far taken, passed through the mills of NWC deliberative sessions and enjoyed unanimous resolutions. The records are there. History will justify Comrade Oshiomhole and posterity will vindicate him.
“Therefore, with eyes firmly fixed on the general elections, especially the re-election of President Muhammadu Buhari in the scheduled February 16, 2019 poll, Comrade Oshiomhole assures all stakeholders in APC of his respect for them. He assures them of his readiness to work with them for the good of the party.
“The comrade chairman also proposes a common front in the general elections and believes that APC, as a governing party, will do a commemorative post mortem next year to appraise and reappraise the political developments and decisions that presaged the election, which it would win emphatically,” the national chairman said.
