BY AMOS DUNIA, ABUJA – Following what he described as running a one-man show in the affairs of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the Deputy National Chairman (North) of the party, Senator Lawal Shuaibu has called on the National Chairman of the Party, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole to take the path of honour and step aside.
Senator Shuaibu said the stepping aside of Oshiomhole would allow for the onerous task of reconstruction and rehabilitation in the States weakened by his actions and the effect and manner the last primary election exercises were conducted or even the task of recreating the party where it is on the path of extinction.
Lawal accused Oshiomhole of taking unilateral decisions and making them to represent the opinion of either the National Working committee, the National Executive Committee or even the least, the National Caucus, stressing that a National Chairman cannot assume the powers of the National Working Committee.
He explained that the last Congresses in States under Oshiomhole’s supervision represented a complete lack of knowledge, not to talk of experience on how due process in political electoral process is adhered to.
Senator Lawal then lectured Oshiomhole on political party administration saying; “The National Working Committee is saddled with the responsibility of recommending guidelines for every electoral process and appointing committees that will embark on conducting primary elections for every constituency and submit report and thereafter an appeal committee will attend to complaints and petitions and also submit its report to the NWC.
“The National Working Committee is then expected to perform the duty of the final adjudicatory body on each electoral matter and from there you have the final list of Candidates.
“National Chairman cannot, in any circumstances be Chairman of any committee be it screening committee or any other committee contrary to what you did.
“Chairman presides over the meetings of National Working Committee in which each matter disposed of by any appeal committee is examined and final decision reached.
“If the National Chairman should chair any of these committees, what if there is a complaint about his own conduct, who do you send your petition to? He cannot be a judge in his own matter!
“National Working Committee meetings, in my own experience, shall not be held in private residences especially where it involves thousands of party men and women with grudges over injustice meted out on them by officials of the Party. The Party Secretariat is the officially recognized venue of such meetings, unless if there are other motives for keeping away from there.”
The APC Deputy National Chairman, North further said; “For every meeting of any organ of the Party, there shall be minutes of the meeting reflecting every decision taken at such meeting. Most of the meetings held and fundamental decisions purported to have been taken were not backed by minutes.
“The few meetings that were covered by the Secretariat and minutes taken could clearly show that final decisions of the NWC were altered! Example was the unanimous decision by NWC to allow Mrs Aisha Alhassan, former Minister of Women Affairs to go and contest with her co-aspirants at the primaries in Taraba State which decision was overruled by you. You singIe handedly disqualified her and numbers in the Party got depleted and thereby weakened. So also, several other aspirants that you personally disqualified without just cause,” Lawal lamented.
He noted that arising from such conduct, the APC ended up with severe injuries and is today badly fractured in virtually every constituency in the country, resulting in the erosion of the massive goodwill that Oshiomhole met the Party with.
He further said; “Apart from the President, more than 60% of members including those that contested elections under the APC in 2019 are not happy with the process as it left a lot to be desired. We have Court cases in every State, by far much more than it was in 2015 and I wonder how much money the Party is likely to spend on litigations arising from mistakes of the National Chairman in not adhering to due process and sidelining transparency.
Lawal pointed out that Committees for primaries became a secret affair to the extent that not even members of the NWC were aware of how certain committees were constituted with members mostly from Edo State outnumbering every other State and in some instance, the same Edo members sewing in more than one State in conducting primaries.
He then asked; “The records are there to be seen. What is wrong with being just in what you find yourself doing for the people? Personal interest should not be allowed to overshadow the interests of our teeming loyal members across the country.”
Lawal continued: “We had 23 States in 2015, but after the 2019 elections we lost 7 States! We also had 60 Senators in 2015 at the end of the election count, we now end up with 57 Senators in 2019! You were not brought in to lose election, It is absolutely unacceptable!
“What this entails is that for any Senator to become a presiding Officer he needs to go and kneel down before the PDP Senators and beg for support! And to make things worse, you announced that APC will not allow any PDP Senator to be, appointed as Committee Chairman except the committees statutorily meant for the opposition members of the Senate.
“That is never the tradition of the legislature anywhere! The Legislature is the house of collaboration and lobby and you can never succeed with hostile approach, you must lobby, seek for cooperation of members across Party divides. If you don’t know, you have made the situation worse than it seems. Try and use your calculator and you will find that as at now, if anybody, backed by the PDP members, wants to become Senate President, all he needs is the support of only 6 APC Senators to win the election on the floor of the Senate.
“Chairman, strategies are not announced on television, they are discussed at caucuses.
We have no reason whatsoever to go about it this way if we really are serious in building this institution that many leaders suffered to put in place.”
