The National Vice Chairman, Northwest, of ruling All Progressives Congress APC, Salihu Lukman, said yesterday that the level of impunity under the leadership of the erstwhile national chairman, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, reached its height when he sought to unilaterally impose a presidential candidate on the party.
He said apart from freezing statutory organs of the party, Adamu wanted to foist then Senate president, Ahmad Lawan, on the party but was swiftly cut to size by state governors and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu who was then an aspirant.
Lukman in a statement, said it was, however, regrettable that the APC had continued to move from one leadership crisis to another, lamenting that today, the National Working Committee, NWC, had become a distant observer in the process of recruiting a new national chairman.
He said: “After winning the campaign to get the caretaker committee organize a national convention, which produced the current NWC, led by Senator Abdullahi Adamu, in no time the party was returned to the old mode of business as usual where statutory organs of the party were frozen.
”No meetings of party organs were taking place and the NWC became practically an observer whereby the National Chairman and National Secretary basically usurped the powers of all organs of the party.
“The height of it was when the national chairman attempted to impose Senator Ahmad Lawan as the 2023 presidential candidate of the party. Progressive Governors and many members of the NWC had to rise to the occasion and check his excesses, which produced President Bola Tinubu as the candidate of the party for 2023 elections. The rest, as is often said, is now history.
“However, we continue to move from one unhealthy situation to another during both the 2023 electioneering campaigns and the process of negotiations to produce leaders of the National Assembly after the elections.
”It was as if the party under the leadership of Senator Adamu was either contesting the authority of President Tinubu or at the least working at cross purposes.”
Agreed zoning formula favours North Central
Lukman also reminded President Tinubu and the Progressives Governors Forum, PGF, that the agreed zoning formula in the party ceded the position of national chairman to North Central.
According to Lukman, restoring constitutional order to APC will require some demonstration of commitment to give life to the statutory organs of the party, so that the debate about replacing the national chairman and all existing vacancies, including that of the national secretary, would be done within the structures of the party.
Lukman was again reacting to reports that former Kano State governor, Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, had been tipped to replace Senator Adamu as the next national chairman.
According the him, the inability to revive statutory organs of the party will suggest that the process of replacing existing vacancies will be manipulated to suite some narrow interests within the party, even if it meant violating provisions of APC constitution.