BREAKING: APC under siege as Governor’s Forum demands Buni’s resignation

Director General of Progressives Governors Forum (PGF), Dr. Lukman Salihu has called on the Chairman of the Caretaker Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC) and the Governor of Yobe State, Mai Mala Buni to resign honourably if he fails to conduct the party’s convention tentatively slated for February.

According to him, party leaders must understand that the survival of the party was at stake and any attempt to continue to contemplate postponement of the convention meant gambling with the future of the party.

The All Progressives Congress is one of the two major contemporary political parties in Nigeria, along with its main rival, the People’s Democratic Party. It was founded on 6 February 2013. The APC candidate Muhammadu Buhari won the presidential election by almost 2.6 million votes.

Lukman’s demand for Buni’s resignation was made known in a letter dated January 5, 2022 titled, “APC National Convention: Urgent Matters for the Survival of APC,” which was sighted by Top Naija.

The party chieftain said the insinuation in the public was that the reluctance of Buni to proceed with implementation of the decision to hold the APC National Convention on February 5, 2022, as agreed was because governors want to continue to control the party.

He stressed that there was need for party leaders to consider convening an emergency meeting of the National Caucus to review all those developments and perhaps give opportunity to Buni and the Secretary, Sen. John Akpanudoedehe to explain whatever difficulty they may be having.

The Director-General noted that some commentators both within the party and in the public had argued that there were deliberate efforts to prevent the convention from holding on February 5, 2022, which was why the CECPC did not make any public announcement or begin to make any preparations.

Lukman said, “It may also be necessary to appeal to both His Excellency, Mai Mala Buni and Sen. John Akpanudoedehe, in the event that the superior organ of the party, possibly the National Caucus, is unable to meet before January 15, 2022, they should take the path of honour and honourably resigned by that date they have not concluded preparations for the Convention and appropriate notice to INEC duly served as required by the law.”

He said the failure of the Buni-led Committee to implement decisions makes APC leaders complicit and therefore agreeable to acts that are injurious to the survival of the party.

Lukman added: “Some of the speculations as the reasons for that include the alleged ambition of His Excellency, Mai Mala Buni to manipulate his emergence as the substantive National Chairman of the party.”

He also challenged Buni to present copies of the membership register to the President and party leaders, insisting that the ruling party is at a difficult political crossroads.

Meanwhile, Ikechukwu Eze, the spokesperson for former President Goodluck Jonathan, has described insinuations that Jonathan would defect from the Peoples Democratic Party to the ruling All Progressives Congress and run for president in 2023 as mere rumours.

Although many claimed that Jonathan’s frequent visit to the President Muhammadu Buhari, at the Presidential Villa lent credence to the overtone, Eze said the meetings had nothing to do with defection or presidential ambition.

Jonathan, who was the candidate of the former ruling party in 2015, was defeated by Buhari, who was the APC candidate.

Since he assumed office, the APC regime had waged war against some aides of the former President considered to be corrupt, with several numbers of them tried for alleged corruption.

However, as the call for power shift to the southern part of the country intensified, some northern interest groups within the APC were allegedly afraid of losing power for eight years Buhari’s successor might spend in office.

It was being speculated that power brokers felt that Jonathan, having been in office for four years, could be supported to spend a term in office to make it possible for another northerner to emerge President after being out of power for just four years.

However, Eze dismissed the postulations, saying that Jonathan’s regular presence at the Villa was to brief his successor on his assignments as special envoy, Economic for West African countries, adding that the ex-President met with Buhari on Thursday to brief him on the political developments in the Republic of Mali.