Uduegbunam Chukwujama and Victor Ezeja
Trouble is far from over for the Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu Presidential campaign train, as the candidate’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) insists on ”leading the process from the front, not from the rear.”
To that effect, the National Working Committee (NWC) members resolved to send a strongly-worded letter signed by the National Chairman, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, to the candidate who had left Nigeria for the United Kingdom (UK) 48 hours before the NWC emergency meeting in Abuja.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelRising from the meeting, which lasted four hours on Wednesday (between 12.30 p.m. and 5 p.m), the NWC re-iterated its earlier position that candidate Tinubu ought not to have released the Presidential Campaign Council membership list without due recourse to the party at the national level.
READ ALSO: Tinubu’s Campaign In Trouble Hours To Kick-off; APC Chairman, NWC, Governors Oppose Candidate’s List
”We (party leaders) are the ones that will lead him around; he is not the one to lead us along’. I’m sure that by now (9 p.m. on Wednesday, September 28, 2022) he would have got our letter, which necessarily restated our initial position on the matter and strongly advised him to follow us accordingly,” a senior party member told Prime Business Africa (PBA).
The official in a chat with PBA said that the original national and regional membership structure and arrangement, which candidate Tinubu confirmed with the President and all APC governors with the understanding that state directorates would be jointly created later, remains substantive. He, however, noted that the governors were irked by the fact that Tinubu and his running mate Kashim Shettima went ahead to unilaterally create directorates and populated them with people who were not screened by the party. ”This why our governors, in particular, are very unhappy.”
Asked what the next line of action would be for the APC, given that other parties had rolled out on Wednesday in line with INEC’s official calendar while Tinubu is said to be out of the country, the oAPC member: ” We are in charge, we will run the campaign and he has no option that to follow us.”
Recall that candidate Tinubu and his running mate had recently released a list of the campaign council members with regional and state directorates populated by men and women he reportedly chose by himself, a list that stirred controversy as result of errors of omission and commission. For instance, the name of a serving Senator, Chimaroke Nnamani of the main opposition People’s Democratic Party was wrongly added in the list, just as that of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo was missing in a campaign council chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari.
READ THE FULL TEXT OF THE NWC LETTER TO TINUBU HERE: You Breached Our Agreement – Full Text Of APC NWC Letter To Tinubu
Uduegbunam Chukwujama
