All Progressives Congress (APC) has condemned the violence, which marred the rerun election in Rivers State at the weekend.
The party Chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun, spoke to journalists after the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting at APC’s National Secretariat in Abuja, March 24, 2016. He described the violence, which claimed many lives, as a disgrace, stressing that some of the killings would have been avoided.
His words: “O Rivers, Rivers. It is a disgrace. That is the only thing one can say. Some of the things that happened and some of the killings that happened would not have happened in this country. But the assurance we can give you and the assurance Mr President has given us is that these issues will be vigorously addressed. People must not get away with that level of dastardly act and killings of the most bestial act and in no circumstance must behaviour like this be allowed to spread to the rest of the country because unless you address it, you are in fact inviting other states to set up their own military wing.”
Oyegun also disclosed that NEC for the first time has established a budget for the party and set up a committee to examine the party’s constitution to streamline it.
According to him, “NEC decided to downsize our Board of Trustees in line with all other constitutional amendments.
“We don’t have any particularly number, but it is going to be seriously downsized. The committee will be headed by the National Legal Adviser. We will put our heads together on that in the next day or two and there may be need to hold on a little bit.”
On the vacant National Publicity Secretary, Oyegun described it as a constitutional matter, stressing that the zone has to propose a replacement.
He pointed out that it was part of the decisions of the NEC that the party was going to have congresses all over the nation to fill all vacancies at all levels, which resulted from victory at the election by party officials who decided to contest, appointments at federal level and at state levels. “There are a lot of vacancies and we need congresses because that is what the constitution provides. No day has been fixed for the congresses because we just took the decision today and we are going to work on it,” he said
