APC Crisis: Drama As Akpanudoedehe Storms Out Of Committee Meeting

There was drama yesterday at national secretariat of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as national secretary of the party’s Caretaker Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC), John James Akpanudoedehe, angrily stormed out of the committee meeting presided over by the party’s acting national chairman and Niger State governor, Abubakar Sani Bello.

Sani-Bello has been presiding over the affairs of the party since Monday when he declared that he was now acting chairman of the party in the absence of the chairman, Mai Mala Buni, who is out of the country.

It was gathered that Akpanudoedehe who angrily left the meeting halfway following a disagreement with Governor Sani Bello drove out of the secretariat before returning to move some of his personal belongings from his office.

“The national secretary was visibly not happy when he left the meeting half way. It’s like they had a disagreement with the acting chairman who asked him to leave. He drove out of the secretariat but returned not quite long to pick his belongings from the office,” a source privy to what transpired at the caretaker committee meeting said.

The development sparked media reports that Apkanudoedehe had resigned as national secretary of the party.

When asked to confirm the purported resignation of the party’s secretary while briefing journalists after the meeting, Governor Bello simply said, “Ask him”.

The governor who confirmed that the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting will be held next week said yesterday’s meeting was a continuation of Monday’s meeting and said, “It is a continuation of yesterday’s meeting. And just know you are not going to be asking me the same thing tomorrow because we are going to be meeting every day until convention so that we can put things together.

“Basically, today we looked at the convention sub-committee and we collected some of the reports from the committee hoping that tomorrow we will decide on the next step to take.”

On the report of the zoning committee submitted by its chairman on Monday, Bello said, “The report of the zoning formula has been submitted and adopted and it will be released any moment from now. I mean the zoning formula.”

Meanwhile, it became clearer that all is not well with the leadership of the APC when the party released a statement last night in reaction to the court judgement sacking Chief David Umahi as governor of Ebonyi State.

The statement was signed by the party’s director of publicity, Salisu Na’inna Dambata, instead of Akpanudoedehe who usually signs releases from the party in his capacity as national secretary.

 

 We’ll Leave If PMB Asks Us To Go – Akpanudoedehe

Meanwhile, the APC national secretary, Akpanudoedehe, quickly returned to the party’s secretariat after reports of his resignation broke, saying it was only an official notification from President Muhammadu Buhari that could warrant his removal and that of the national chairman, Governor Mai Mala Buni.

Speaking with journalists at the party’s national secretariat, he said, “I am waiting for the chairman (Buni). If we have a directive from the president that we should resign, we are not bigger than the president; we will do so if we hear from him. Somebody cannot say ‘go and announce he is resigning’. Like MKO Abiola used to say, you don’t shave someone’s head in his absence. So, we have done so much.”

Akpanudoedehe said if he had resigned, his resignation letter would have been in the public domain, adding that it was not the first time the APC is witnessing power play.

He said, “I have read in social media that I have resigned as Secretary of the APC. I want to state that it is not true that I resigned. If I had resigned, you would have seen my letter of resignation written by me. Someone cannot just say somebody is dead when he is alive.

“I am not bigger than the party, or bigger than the president who is a leader of the country. I am waiting for my national chairman to come back.

“We have done so much for this party. When we inherited this party, if you can recall, it was at its lowest ebb. We built the party and recovered a lot of grounds. We were able to register 41 million members. And we bought this secretariat of the party.

“We have been able to recover what we lost. We lost and brought in a lot of governors. All the states we lost, we brought in two weeks. We have been able to go round this country and the constitution that was a difficult thing to do, we have done it in less than one year.

“We have done reconciliation, ward, local governments and state congresses and we are about to do the national convention.  This is not the first time you are seeing a power play.”

 

APC Senators Move To Save Party

Meanwhile, against the backdrop of the crisis rocking APC, Senators elected on the platform of the party met after Senate plenary yesterday in a move to save the party from imminent disarray.

Speaking with journalists after the meeting which lasted for about two hours at the National Assembly complex, the leader of the Senate and chairman of APC caucus, Senator Yahaya Abdullahi (APC, Kebbi North), said their immediate concern was to save the party from further degeneration into serious crisis at the national level.

“What we are concerned about is the seeming disarray in the party,” Abdullahi said.

According to him, the Senators have resolved to serve as unifiers within the party in order to bring together all the various groups with vested interests.

He continued: “We are too worried about what is happening in our party and we expressed our concern over the challenges facing the party. Very close to its national convention and we thought as very important stakeholders in the party, we want to draw the attention of everyone involved to come together and unite so that we can have a very successful convention in the party.

“What is happening is about the future of our party and government and also the capacity of our party to win elections in 2023. We cannot afford to come to the convention as a divided entity. Anywhere there are challenges that could cost the party its victory is a loss for everybody.

“So, we have resolved to meet again to articulate the major issues and then meet with the various stakeholders and aspirants of the party to advise and call for unity and sense of purpose in order to make sure that we unite every faction, every stakeholder of the party, so that the party can emerge victorious in 2023 elections,” he said.

The APC caucus, however, commended the Buni-led caretaker committee for some of the gains made in the last two years.

“We have sat down as important stakeholders, as a caucus in this great party, to dissect all the issues that have been affecting our party since the formation of the caretaker and extraordinary convention planning committee.

“We are quite aware of the challenges that they have faced and we are also aware of the successes that the committee has recorded particularly when it comes to registration of members, they came to harmonise some of the successes of the party, carrying out congresses at the ward, local government and at the State levels. We commend the performance of that committee in that respect,” Senator Abdullahi added.