With the resignation of the women affairs minister, Aisha Jumai Alhassan, President Muhammadu Buhari has asked the Minister of State for Industry, Trade and Investment, Hajiya Aisha Abubakar to supervise the ministry.
Aisha Alhassan, who had been the minister since the beginning of the Buhari’s government, resigned later this week in protest over her disqualification from contesting the governorship position of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Taraba State.
President Buhari, who accepted Aisha Alhassan’s resignation in a letter dated today, Sunday, September 30, said: “I have received your letter offering your resignation as a Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I accept your resignation with immediate effect.
“On behalf of the government and people of Nigeria, I thank you for your past services to the nation.”
President Buhari directed that the resumption of Aisha Abubakar as minister of women affairs and social development should be with immediate effect.
National leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu has formally endorsed Babajide Sanwo-Olu as the best choice for the governorship of Lagos State in tomorrow, Monday’s governorship primary of the party, saying that the current governor, Akinwumi Ambode had deviated from the Lagos development blue print.
Tinubu, who seemed to be responding to the statement by governor Ambode in his wordl press conference today, Sunday, asked Lagos people to reject him (Ambode) in the state’s APC primary election..
Asiwaju, who was former Lagos governor, reminded the people of the state that Lagos Lagos will have an encounter with destiny tomorrow, adding that with the holding of direct primaries to elect governorship candidates in Lagos and other states, “the APC takes a groundbreaking step toward greater internal democracy and progressive governance for the benefit of all people.”
Part of his statement goes thus:
While our party is young, it has grown fast and has travelled far in a short time. This speaks well of the character of you, the party’s rank-and-file members.
What, in other nations, has taken political parties generations to achieve, we have done in a few brief years. No other party in Nigeria dare attempt what we have already dedicated ourselves to do.
I thank and commend all APC members and all Lagosians who have lent their support to this historic and humane mission upon which our party has embarked.
We are democrats in the truest sense of the word. As such, we forever search for what is good and right for the people. With this ideal as our guide, tomorrow’s primary cannot be shaded by selfish ambition or the perceived personal grievance between this or that person.
Something much greater waits in the balance. What is at stake is nothing less than the future of the people of this state and how we can best maximise our collective destiny.
By resort to direct primaries, the party places the people’s future soundly in their hands. As democracy would have it, you shall be the authors of the party’s nomination and hopefully our next state government.
I trust in the wisdom of the people and will abide it. However, as a leader of the party and as a former governor of our beloved and excellent Lagos, I would be remiss if I did not make a few observations regarding the primary.
My goal is and shall always be a better Lagos. To this objective, I have dedicated the greater part of my public life. Roughly 20 years ago, a corps of dedicated and patriotic Lagosians, put aside personal interests and rivalries, to put their minds and best ideas together for the good of the state. Out of this collaborative effort, was born a master plan for economic development that would improve the daily lives of our people.
Bestowed on me was the honour of a lifetime when I was elected to be your governor in 1999. My administration faithfully implemented that plan. The government of my immediate successor, Tunde Fashola, also honoured this enlightened plan.
Where state government remained true to that blueprint, positive things happened. During my tenure and Governor Fashola’s, Lagos state recorded improvements in all aspects of our collective existence, from public health to public sanitation, from education to social services, from the administration of justice to the cleaning of storm and sewage drains.
Businesses, large and small, invested, hired millions of workers and thrived. All Lagosians were to fully participate and justly benefit from the social dividends and improvements wrought by this plan. From the common labourer, to business leaders, to professionals and our industrious civil service. We all were to be partners in a monumental but joint enterprise. None was to be alienated.
None was to be left out. And none were to be pushed aside. This is especially true for those who contributed so much to our development, whether as a business leader who has invested heavily in Lagos, the homeowner who struggles to pay his fair share of taxes or as someone employed in the hard work of keeping our streets and byways clean so that others may go about their daily tasks unimpeded.
I make no pretence that the master plan is perfect. It can always be fine-tuned. However, whenever a government departed from this plan without compelling reason, the state and its people have borne the painful consequence of the improper departure.
To ignore this blueprint for progress in order to replace it with ad-hoc schemes of a materially inferior quality contravenes the spirit of progressive governance and of our party. Such narrowness of perspective does not bring us closer to our appointed destination; it takes us farther from that destiny.
For reasons unknown to me and most Lagosians, we have experienced such deviations from enlightened governance recently.
This trend is that which most concerns me as the primary nears. We must arrest this trend before irreparable harm is committed against the people and their future. For the record, let it be known that I shall vote in this primary because I see it as one of extreme import to our state and our party. Just as I shall vote, I equally urge all party members to do so. We must vote in a manner that returns Lagos to its better path, the one that promises a just chance for all to enjoy the fruits of our prosperity. We must always pursue our goal of a Lagos energised by creative dynamism, tolerance of others, and guided by a leadership capable of extending a collegial hand to all stakeholders, far and wide.
I am encouraged by the emergence of a candidate in this primary who has served the state in senior positions in my administration, the Fashola administration and even in the current one. While possessing a wealth of experience and exposure, he is a young man endowed with superlative vision and commitment. Most importantly, he understands the importance of the blueprint for development. He esteems it as a reliable and well-conceived vehicle for the future development of the state. He also knows the value of reaching out and working with others in order to maximize development and provide people the best leadership possible. With people like him at the helm, the state will write the proper history for itself.
When the final word is given let it be said that we want all Lagosians to look to the future with the hope and optimism that our best days remain before us and not behind us.
We walk into this primary strong and confidently believing in the right course we are to take. We shall emerge from this primary even stronger and more confident that we have taken that course by returning Lagos and our party to their finest path.
Embattled Lagos state Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, has gone haywire, describing his main opponent in tomorrow, Monday’s governorship primary of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos, Jide Sanwo-Olu, as mentally ill.
Addressing a world press conference today, Sunday, in Lagos, Governor Ambode said that Sanwo-Olu had gone through mental rehabilitation and therefore not a fit and proper candidate for the position of Lagos governor.
“He (Sanwo-Olu) has been arrested for spending fake US dollars in an American night club. He lacks competency and health wise, he has gone through mental rehabilitation.”
Governor Ambode said that Sanwo-Olu had served term in US prisons in connection with a string of counterfeit bill-passing incidents in the country.
For the first time since his battle with forces loyal to South-West political strongman Senator Bola Tinubu, the governor said that he was fully prepared for a free and fair party primary elections, tomorrow, Monday.
He said that he was under no illusion about the task ahead in the APC primary billed to produce the APC flag bearer for governorship position in the state.
The Bayelsa State Government has directed immediate closure of all schools in the state as a precautionary measure to avoid loss of lives in the flooding that is devastating the state.
The decision was reached at the State Executive Council (SEC) meeting presided over by the State Governor, Henry Seriake Dickson, who also set up a special committee to facilitate prompt and effective response to the flood emergency in the state.
The Commissioner of Information and Orientation, Daniel Iworiso-Markson, said in a statement that the SEC also directed the Ministry of Health to set up an emergency health response unit in the state to mitigate the effect of the flood on the people.
Iworiso-Markson said that the Emergency Health Response Unit of the Ministry of Health was designed to monitor and prevent the outbreak of diseases like cholera during the period covered by flooding in Bayelsa.
According to him, the Director of the State Emergency Management Agency briefed the State Executive Council on the flood situation and said that the agency would kick-start the distribution of relief materials to affected communities on Saturday.
The commissioner advised the Bayelsa citizenry not to panic as the government was making all efforts to secure lives and properties in the state.
He said that a large number of communities in virtually all the local government areas were seriously affected by the flooding especially in Ekeremor, Sagbama, Ogbia, Southern Ijaw and indeed all the eight local government areas.
He said, “The Bayelsa State Executive Council has directed immediate closure of all schools including private institutions in the state as a precautionary measure to avoid loss of lives to severe flooding in the state.
“The Government has also set up a Special Committee to coordinate activities relating to the flood which has affected several communities in the state.
“The State Executive Council also directed the Commissioner for Health to set up an Emergency Response Unit to monitor and prevent the outbreak of diseases like cholera and others associated with flooding.
“The Director in charge of SEMA briefed the State Executive Council on the flood situation and said that the agency would commence distribution of relief materials on Saturday.
Government is taking all measures to secure lives and property; the good people of Bayelsa should not panic.”
As the governing party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, goes into the critical process of choosing from the different aspirants, the candidates to fly its flag in the coming general election, there is need for eternal vigilance. It has to be so because the raison d’etre of any political party is to win popular elections, form government and implement its policies for the greater good of all. And to win any election, it is imperative for any serious political party to select credible party members with the highest chances of bringing electoral victory as its candidate for any election. This is why the process of selecting or electing party candidates in a primary election is very critical for the outcome of the general election.
This is really the first primary election that the APC is organizing in the saddle of power at the centre and it is important that the party gets its act together and do the right thing. Luckily, APC just needs to look back to 2015 and see what happened to the behemoth that ruled the country for sixteen years; how the party was roundly rejected by the Nigerian people, due to its impunity and lack of justice in choosing and imposing candidates on members. Luckily, Adams Oshiomhole, the chairman of APC, is a very good student of history and has been leading the line to fight social injustice from the front. He therefore understands full well the sensitive nature of the job at hand.
I listened to Oshiomhole the other day admonish the state chairmen of his party on the need to be fair to all aspirants in the conduct of the primaries and it was quite reassuring. That the APC Chairman reminded his counterparts at the state level to be courageous and refuse to succumb to the suffocating and overbearing influence of their state governors is, perhaps, the most patriotic statement to come from anyone in leadership position in our country this year.
For those who understand, state governors remain the greatest threat to our democracy. They are such a big threat because they daily undermine internal democracy in their different political parties. And the quality of democracy within the political parties determines the quality of democracy in the entire country. State governors, and of course Oshiomhole is a former governor, treat their states including their political parties as their private estates with all its implications for democracy. Since 2003, most state governors have determined candidates for the various offices in their respective states: they hijack the power of party members to determine who fly their flags as governorship candidates when they are on their second term; they decree who the senatorial candidates are; and, handpick candidates for House of Representatives.
These emperors care less about the suitability and popularity of their arbitrary choices with the electorate whose right it is to decide at the polls. Only recently, one APC governor on national television ruled that as he was going to the Senate, he had decided where governorship aspirants should come from his state and threatened anyone who thinks otherwise to “dare him by picking the nomination form”. In Imo State, for instance, the state governor, Rochas Okorocha, has already ruled that his son in-law, must replace him as governor whether the electorate like it or not. This kind of despotic remarks ought not to be made even in a hush-hush tone in a democracy. But what do people like Okorocha care even if their unpopular ambition imperil the chances of President Muhammadu Buhari from securing the much-needed twenty-five percent of the votes in their states?
Oshiomhole is certainly not fighting the governors in APC who are party leaders in their own rights. But he is rightly letting them to understand that the interests of the country and the party supersede all other interests and that is why he is asking state chairmen to stand firm and defend the constitution and manifesto of their party in the conduct of the primary elections in their various states. Whichever mode of primary election that has been approved for the states, Oshiomhole is therefore asking all party men and women to play by the rules and allow internal democracy to throw up a candidate that can win popular votes for the party in the general election. In this era of electoral integrity under this present INEC, only credible and popular candidates are sure to win a free and fair election.
Another issue, so far, in the APC primary elections is the news of the disqualification of two cabinet ministers from the governorship race by the APC screening committee. To be sure, the minister of communications, Alhaji Adebayo Shittu and the minister for women affairs, Senator Aisha Alhassan were disqualified from contesting for APC governorship ticket in Oyo and Taraba states respectively. The party disqualified Shittu for dodging the mandatory National Youth Service (NYSC) while Alhassan was disqualified for apparent disloyalty to the party. These two cases further reinforce APC’S claim of being a morally upright party. That both politicians beat the system to be appointed ministers is another matter entirely but to further reward them with the party’s tickets would be unforgivable and certainly will have consequences at the polls.
Speaking on Senator Alhassan who had previously declared her loyalty to an opposition presidential aspirant, Oshiomhole put the facts as they are: “…You cannot be a member of APC and be a card-carrying member of another party; but when you have a situation where it would appear, based on what you know and based on what I know, that someone is probably APC in the daytime maybe for the purpose of retaining certain offices, and they are PDP at heart”. And Pronto, Senator Alhassan sent in her resignation letter as minister and as a member of APC. She has already joined the United Democratic Party (UDP) on which platform she wants to contest the Taraba governorship election. And, as for Shittu, media reports have indicated that he is ready to be mobilized for the mandatory national service.
The Oshiomhole leadership has, evidently, demonstrated political will and courage that have been lacking in the APC. This Oshiomhole is certainly not naive. He is indeed a party leader with great foresight! He is expected to tackle other issues that arise with equal commitment in the interest of propriety in the party and not minding whose ox is gored in every circumstance.
Opposition by former governor of Rivers state and current minister of Transport, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, to Nyesom Wike succeeding him as governor of the oil-rich state, reflectively, is more explicable. Given their friendship, Amaechi had the benefit of detailed knowledge of the Wike persona and psychosomatic makeup. If all had been well between him and former President Goodluck Jonathan and he had remained in the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, I can bet my life that Amaechi would not have allowed Wike to pick the party’s governorship nomination ticket, let alone win the governorship election.
As a result of his smoldering disagreement with Jonathan, Amaechi had left the party for the All Progressives Congress, APC, where he played a leading role in the general election that upstaged the applecart of Jonathan’s presidency. But Wike bludgeoned his way to the leadership of the PDP in Rivers state and hijacked the entire structure, using his politically-correct relationship with Jonathan and his wife, Patience, an indigene of the state, for a gambit that paid off.
He deployed the influence of the centre and the south-south’s political sentiments to swim or sink with the PDP, even after Jonathan had lost the presidential election to President Muhammdu Buhari in the 2015 presidential election, to lock in the majority votes in the Rivers state governorship election and clinch victory at the expense of Amaechi’s candidate, Dr. Dakuku Peterside. The subsequent legal battle initiated by the APC to upturn Wike’s victory was sensationally resolved in favour of Wike by the Supreme Court after the tribunal and the court of appeal had given a verdict for a rerun election.
No sooner had his election received the validation by the apex court than Wike manifested, full blown, his essential personality traits, the most obvious being his loose tongue that sometimes portrays him as arrogant and unsophisticated. I have, in my solitary moments, whenever I consider the PDP trajectory since 1999, wondered how star-crossed the party has been to have fallen into the hands of a man whose politics is self-serving.
Reminiscing on the politics of Rivers state from 1999, I have also wondered why etiquette in governance, especially in pronouncements by successive Rivers governors, has been on the decline. Governor Peter Odili was evidently an exemplar in elegant communication, charismatic poise and consistent gravitas. Amaechi who took over from him was not as good. Although, suffused in arrogant mien, he demonstrated some measure of finesse in his pronouncements. But Wike is, arguably, deficient in all of Odili’s fine leadership virtues.
But with huge resources at his disposal in Rivers, he possibly perceives that he can always have his way in the party. His gung-ho attitude is fed by a sense of entitlement and expectation that having been smart to fund the party, the other governors and stakeholders should be dumb since they are not ready to put their money where their mouths are. However, he should realise that others who funded the party before him were not this reckless. If they had, there might not have been a PDP for him to hijack.
Wike should remember the Ibo proverb that those whose palm kernels had been cracked for them by the benevolent spirit should learn to be humble. With a chequered political odyssey that, perhaps, began with his chairmanship of the very rich Obio/Okpor Local Government, it is unfortunate that from the imperial majesty of his Rivers governorship position, he now talks magisterially to the party and its leadership apparatchiks. Much as he has the right to speak, he should have been decorous and allowed mutual respect to preponderate such interface.
His recent and widely publicized threat, to destroy the PDP if the presidential primary election, earlier fixed to hold in Port Harcourt, was shifted, smacks of sheer political rascality, blackmail, intimidation and brinkmanship. His reason of economic benefits derivable by Rivers would initially appear convincing when one considers the principle of quid pro quo in his heavy funding of the party, but his retort was crude and gangsterish.
For God’s sake, must Wike threaten to bring down the roof of the party on top of everybody just because some presidential aspirants were pushing for a change of Port Harcourt as venue of a presidential primary election in which he is not a participant? That raises the genuine concern that, beyond what Rivers state stands to gain economically, that there is more to his outburst and incendiary statements than meets the eye. Although he had reportedly apologized to the party at its last National Executive Committee, NEC, meeting that ratified Port Harcourt as the venue, he had already unraveled as a potential bull in the China shop.
In fact, the rumour doing the round is that Wike is interested in the emergence of one of the presidential aspirants as candidate of the party. He is said to be supporting and promoting the aspiration of former speaker and governor of Sokoto state, Aminu Tambuwwal. Having installed Prince Uche Secondus as national chairman, his obsession is to anoint the presidential candidate of the party. His reasonable expectation is to become the ultimate godfather of Nigeria’s presidential politics in the event his candidate wins the February 16 election regardless that Tambuwwal does not have the national appeal, clout and structure to defeat President Muhammadu Buhari of the APC.
Certainly, it is not too difficult to understand how the PDP came to this sorry pass of having some unsophisticated minds playing the Alpha and the Omega in its affairs. In any case, had the former president, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, smartly run his government and managed the party well, it is doubtful if Wike and his cohort would be in a position today to impose their diktats on the party.
The party has yet to recover from the impolitic scheme that produced his acolyte, Secondus, as national chairman at the expense of much better aspirants like the politically-sagacious Chief Bode George and intellectually-grounded Professor Tunde Adeniran from the south west zone. He had thrown his financial weight behind the party leadership to predetermine the outcome of the party’s national convention where he installed Secondus.
Against the run of play and commonsense, Wike had impetuously and in an adversarial fashion, acting in cahoots with the Governor of Ekiti state, Ayodele Fayose, eclipsed the southwest to which the party originally ceded the position of the national chairman. He had his way and his sense of hubris has since been evident. I guess that northern leaders of the PDP decided to watch Wike run rings round the southwest and the southeast on the issue since it was a southern affair.
But now that it is about the presidential slot ceded to the north, the much more strategic north is standing up to Wike and he has begun to fret and shout. Wike has the right to shout but the party leaders in the north should be single-minded to decide on what is right and in the interest of the party. Even if the primary election is held within the Rivers Government House or in the governor’s bedroom, the north can be trusted not to allow an outsider, whose stake in its affairs is self-serving, to impose his will on the region.
Although, there are genuine fears that Wike plans to manipulate and over-regulate the atmospherics and the nuances of the Rivers ecology to the advantage of his preferred aspirant in terms of accommodation and other logistics, it is expected that the northern leaders, both in and outside the PDP, would do the needful in the circumstance to shatter his gambit by shifting attention to an alternative that enjoys more acceptability in the north, if only to deride Wike’s bull-in-the-china-shop attitude.
Executives of the two labour centres, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) have called off the nationwide warning strike.
The suspension followed a firm commitment from the federal government to reopen negotiations in the national minimum wage tripartite committee, chaired by former minister of housing and urban development, Mrs Ma Pepple.
The two labour union called out Nigerian workers on one week warning strike to compel the Federal government to effect a new minimum wage for workers across the board.
Kano Gov, Ganduje ques to vote during Apc Presidential Primary In Kano
The presidency has described the outcome of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential primaries which held yesterday, Friday in many states of the federation as a sign of victory for President Muhammadu Buhari in the next year’s general election.
Some of the results declared by governors or top party members in APC controlled states showed that Buhari scored high number of votes even though he was in the U. S attending the 73rd United Nation General Assembly.
In his home state of Katsina, the state chapter announced that he scored 802,819 votes during the exercise in the state. Other results are Kano 2,931,235, Zamfara 247,847 representing 98%, Jigawa 202,599 votes, Bauchi 786,032 and Sokoto 472, 344
In a statement today, Saturday, the Presidential spokesman, Malam Garba Shehu said that in a more direct way, the huge turnout of millions of registered party members at all voting centres proved that the president had an incomparable ability to reach out to people and mobilise votes.
“It is significant that President Buhari has won a major victory, fair and square through direct nationwide primary, a system that seeks to break the mould.”
Garba Shehu said that President Buhari has shown that “you don’t have to be a party owner or go through a difficult inner party consensus to emerge as candidate.”
He said that the victory sign is a message to everyone that development and good governance are more important to the Nigerian people than “divide and rule politics.
“The message in the air from this unique achievement by the APC is that all true democratic parties in the country need to start raising their act by copying the leadership of the President.
“We thank everyone for their role in bringing about this victory.”
The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has shifted governorship primaries in Lagos and Imo States to Monday, October 1.
The governorship primary which was earlier scheduled to hold on Sunday along with other states, was shifted due to logistics constraints in both Lagos and Imo States, according to the party.
The National Chairman of the party, Adams Oshiomhole, who spoke today, Saturday while inaugurating a 21-member National Convention Committee headed by the Oyo State Governor, Abiola Ajimobi, said that no fewer than 177 aspirants were currently jostling to get the tickets of the party in 29 states. O“We have only 29 vacancies for governors and to fill these 29 vacancies, we have distinguished Nigerians, men and women, about 177 that applied,”
Speaking on high number of governorship aspirants Oshiomhole said the trend points to the level of interest, commitment, passion and above all the confidence that people have in the APC.
He said the governorship primaries will still hold on Sunday in 27 states as earlier scheduled.
Oshiomhole further reassured all party members across the country that the exercise will be free, fair and credible, urging them to support whoever emerges after the primaries to get final victory at general elections.
Justifying the disqualification of some aspirants, Oshiomhole said the party carefully chose who will be its flagbearer thorough screening exercise.
The party had disqualified two serving ministers, Minister of Communication, Adebayo Shittu, and his counterpart at Women Affairs ministry, Senator Aisha Alhassan, who were both governorship aspirants in Oyo and Taraba States respectively, Explaining the situation Oshiomhole said: “We have tried as much as we can to carry out a thorough screening exercise in a way that will enable us to benefit from the recent things that have happened in our party that some of us believe that we can learn some positive lessons from there and we have heard of the implications of such actions and reviewed the way in which we select people who contest elections on our platforms.”
Oshiomhole assured that the party will organise transparent primaries and then go ahead to hold a national convention that will be different from others.
He said that apart from ratifying the candidacy of President Buhari, the convention will be used to amend some aspects of the APC constitution.
“As we speak, we have our membership register which has been distributed to the 36 states. “I believe that we have compelling reasons to conduct credible primaries across the country. The guidelines have been well articulated and we expect the chairmen to provide leadership in all states where they have been deployed to.
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Embattled Lagos state Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, has gone haywire, describing his main opponent in 
The Bayelsa State Government has directed immediate closure of all schools in the state as a precautionary measure to avoid loss of lives in the flooding that is devastating the state.
Executives of the two labour centres, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) have called off the nationwide warning strike.
The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has shifted governorship primaries in Lagos and Imo States to Monday, October 1.
Issues In APC Primary Elections, By Josephine Babatunde
This is really the first primary election that the APC is organizing in the saddle of power at the centre and it is important that the party gets its act together and do the right thing. Luckily, APC just needs to look back to 2015 and see what happened to the behemoth that ruled the country for sixteen years; how the party was roundly rejected by the Nigerian people, due to its impunity and lack of justice in choosing and imposing candidates on members. Luckily, Adams Oshiomhole, the chairman of APC, is a very good student of history and has been leading the line to fight social injustice from the front. He therefore understands full well the sensitive nature of the job at hand.
I listened to Oshiomhole the other day admonish the state chairmen of his party on the need to be fair to all aspirants in the conduct of the primaries and it was quite reassuring. That the APC Chairman reminded his counterparts at the state level to be courageous and refuse to succumb to the suffocating and overbearing influence of their state governors is, perhaps, the most patriotic statement to come from anyone in leadership position in our country this year.
For those who understand, state governors remain the greatest threat to our democracy. They are such a big threat because they daily undermine internal democracy in their different political parties. And the quality of democracy within the political parties determines the quality of democracy in the entire country. State governors, and of course Oshiomhole is a former governor, treat their states including their political parties as their private estates with all its implications for democracy. Since 2003, most state governors have determined candidates for the various offices in their respective states: they hijack the power of party members to determine who fly their flags as governorship candidates when they are on their second term; they decree who the senatorial candidates are; and, handpick candidates for House of Representatives.
These emperors care less about the suitability and popularity of their arbitrary choices with the electorate whose right it is to decide at the polls. Only recently, one APC governor on national television ruled that as he was going to the Senate, he had decided where governorship aspirants should come from his state and threatened anyone who thinks otherwise to “dare him by picking the nomination form”. In Imo State, for instance, the state governor, Rochas Okorocha, has already ruled that his son in-law, must replace him as governor whether the electorate like it or not. This kind of despotic remarks ought not to be made even in a hush-hush tone in a democracy. But what do people like Okorocha care even if their unpopular ambition imperil the chances of President Muhammadu Buhari from securing the much-needed twenty-five percent of the votes in their states?
Oshiomhole is certainly not fighting the governors in APC who are party leaders in their own rights. But he is rightly letting them to understand that the interests of the country and the party supersede all other interests and that is why he is asking state chairmen to stand firm and defend the constitution and manifesto of their party in the conduct of the primary elections in their various states. Whichever mode of primary election that has been approved for the states, Oshiomhole is therefore asking all party men and women to play by the rules and allow internal democracy to throw up a candidate that can win popular votes for the party in the general election. In this era of electoral integrity under this present INEC, only credible and popular candidates are sure to win a free and fair election.
Another issue, so far, in the APC primary elections is the news of the disqualification of two cabinet ministers from the governorship race by the APC screening committee. To be sure, the minister of communications, Alhaji Adebayo Shittu and the minister for women affairs, Senator Aisha Alhassan were disqualified from contesting for APC governorship ticket in Oyo and Taraba states respectively. The party disqualified Shittu for dodging the mandatory National Youth Service (NYSC) while Alhassan was disqualified for apparent disloyalty to the party. These two cases further reinforce APC’S claim of being a morally upright party. That both politicians beat the system to be appointed ministers is another matter entirely but to further reward them with the party’s tickets would be unforgivable and certainly will have consequences at the polls.
Speaking on Senator Alhassan who had previously declared her loyalty to an opposition presidential aspirant, Oshiomhole put the facts as they are: “…You cannot be a member of APC and be a card-carrying member of another party; but when you have a situation where it would appear, based on what you know and based on what I know, that someone is probably APC in the daytime maybe for the purpose of retaining certain offices, and they are PDP at heart”. And Pronto, Senator Alhassan sent in her resignation letter as minister and as a member of APC. She has already joined the United Democratic Party (UDP) on which platform she wants to contest the Taraba governorship election. And, as for Shittu, media reports have indicated that he is ready to be mobilized for the mandatory national service.
The Oshiomhole leadership has, evidently, demonstrated political will and courage that have been lacking in the APC. This Oshiomhole is certainly not naive. He is indeed a party leader with great foresight! He is expected to tackle other issues that arise with equal commitment in the interest of propriety in the party and not minding whose ox is gored in every circumstance.