The National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, on Sunday opened up on the crisis rocking the party, rejecting attempts by some forces to oust the national chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole.
He said removing the national chairman whom he said had toiled hard for the party would be an act of “ingratitude.”
Tinubu also lashed out at those fuelling the crisis because of the 2023 ambition, accusing them of being afflicted with malady worse than the Coronavirus pandemic.
In a statement he personally signed, the national leader for the umpteenth time said discussing about the 2023 race would be a “disservice” to the party and President Muhammadu Buhari who has a four-year mandate and is piloting the affairs of the country on a path of progressive governance.
Tinubu said the embattled Chairman has “been a tireless campaigner and mobilizer for the party.”
“He has steered the party through difficult elections. His contributions should not be undervalued now that the bulk of elections are behind us. To do so would be an act of ingratitude,” he said.
He noted that while the dispute between Oshiomhole and Edo state governor, Godwin Obaseki is unfortunate, efforts to reconcile the duo have been rebuffed by those “motivated by ambitions that have nothing to do with the quality of the Chairman’s performance.”
He said “self-help attempts” to oust the chairman “are unwarranted,” adding, that “these attempts reveal more about the mala fides of their perpetrators than they do about the Chairman.”
Tinubu alerted Nigerians to be wary of what he called “old Ambition-virus 2023” which is afflicting many “in the political class along with their allies in the media.”
He said, “Those touched by this malady find that their ability to tell time and discern the difference between the present and the future has been strongly impaired. The carriers of this sickness are confused as to the very season our nation now finds itself.
“They conflate things, which no sensible person would conflate. The primary symptom of their malady is the driving tendency to believe the events of 2023 will be decided before we even exit the year 2020.
“Consequently, everything they say and do is geared toward obsessive jockeying for position to control and manipulate a race still three years away.
In doing so, they recklessly undermine the very party which they claim to serve and weaken the administration of President Buhari to which they claim to be loyal. They line up to run a race for which the track has not even yet been constructed.”
