Settle APC’s crisis, Akande to Buhari, govs

Firstclass newsline learnt that a former interim National Chairman of
the All Progressives Congress, Chief Bisi Akande, has called on
President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC governors to halt the party's
drift.
Akande, in a statement, on Sunday, warned that the ongoing crisis
afflicting the party was capable of jeopardising the chances of the
APC in 2019.
He said, "Now that the whole conspiracy has blown open, it is doubtful
if the present institutions of party leadership can muster the
required capacity to arrest the drift.
"It is my opinion that President Buhari, and the APC governors should
now see the APC as a rocking platform that may not be strong enough
again to carry them to political victory in 2019 and they should
quickly begin a joint damage control effort to reconstruct the party
in its claim to bring about the promised change before the party's
shortcomings begin to aggravate the challenges of governance in their
hands."
Condemning the crisis rocking the country's National Assembly, Akande
alleged that "numerous among those calling themselves businessmen in
Nigeria are like leeches sucking from the nation's blood largely
through various governments and particularly through the Nigerian
Federal Government.
"While all these schisms were going on in the APC, those who were
jittery of Buhari's constant threat of anti-corruption's battle began
to encourage and finance rebellions against the APC democratic
positions which led to the emergence of Senator Bukola Saraki as the
candidate of the PDP tendencies inside and outside the APC."
The Ila-Orangun-born political chieftain recalled that, "With the air
of oneness, APC went ahead to conduct primaries to select candidates
for state governors and Houses of Assembly and for the Presidency and
the National Assembly.
"After the elections which saw APC to victory all round, a meeting was
reported to have been held by certain old new-PDP leaders in a Peoples
Democratic Party (chieftain's house) in Abuja to review what should be
their share in this new Buhari's government and resolved to seek
collaboration with the PDP with a view to hijacking the National
Assembly and, having got rid of Goodluck Jonathan, with an ultimate
aim of resuscitating the PDP as their future political platform."
The statement read in part, "Unknown to most APC members, while
Senator Bukola Saraki was being adopted as the candidate for Senate
President by certain old new-PDP tendencies, the theory was being
propagated that, like in most presidential democracy, the APC minority
leaders in the old National Assembly (i.e George Akume for the Senate
and Femi Gbajabiamila for the House of Representatives) should
automatically become Senate President and Speaker respectively now
that the APC has the majority.
"Certain leaders felt that most past Senate Presidents had come from
Benue State which Akume represented and that Benue State should be
made to assume the traditional home of all senate presidents. At the
same time, certain senators were clamouring for one of the most
ranking senators anywhere outside the North-west zone that produced
the President. That was how Ahmed Lawan who had been in the House of
Representatives for eight years and in the Senate for another eight
years emerged as the candidate for the senate president."
Firstclassnewsline.net