A ranking senator, Bala Ibn Na’Allah (APC, Kebbi South), has advocated for the extension of the tenure of the Governor Mai Mala Buni-led caretaker committee of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to address the crisis rocking the ruling party.
Na’Allah, a Board of Trustees (BoT) member of the APC, stated this in an exclusive interview with Daily Trust, saying the extension will avail the committee the opportunity to carefully address the challenges facing the party to ensure its survival.
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The APC National Executive Committee (NEC) had in June 2020, dissolved the Adams Oshiomhole-led National Working Committee (NWC) over alleged abuse of office.
The NEC also constituted a 13-member Caretaker/Extraordinary National Convention Planning Committee headed by Yobe State Governor Mai Mala Buni to administer the party’s affairs and to, within six months, organise a national convention for a new crop of NWC members to emerge.
The call for the extension is coming one month to the expiration of the six-month tenure of the committee. Already, there is tension in the party over a suspected plot to extend the committee’s tenure.
The lawmaker lamented that key persons who contributed to the formation of the party and its success in 2015 general elections have been sidelined in the scheme of things, noting also that critical organs of the party have been grounded.
“Board of Trustees was formed but not allowed to function. The NEC itself was not allowed to function properly. These problems that have been created can be extremely difficult to solve without creating damage to the party. So there are issues that need to be treated carefully.
“On one side, some people worked tirelessly and used whatever they had to bring the party into being. They equally invested heavily of their time and money to ensure the success of the party. But somewhere along the line, the machinery that would have recognised and rewarded them for that hard work left them completely redundant.
“The people who never did anything to ensure the success of the party are the ones calling the shots in the party. Therefore, the result is what we are seeing now,” he said.
According to him, people who had the perfect ideas of what the president wanted the party to be have been pushed aside.
“So, the interest of these other people had distorted that thinking and dislocated it and, therefore, created some problems that are very difficult to solve within the time limit given to the Buni-led committee.
“We are hoping that in the process of rebuilding the party, the party will look back and also take into consideration the opinions of those who initially struggled to bring the party into being.
But if it goes the PDP way, by ensuring that only a bloc in the party will have the power to dictate what happens, then I can assure you that the party will not go anywhere.
“So, it is my hope that the Buni-led interim committee should be able to thread with some level of care to ensure that they take steps to address the problems of the party,” he said.
Asked how long he wants the committee’s tenure to be extended, he said, “They are in the position to say the duration because they know the magnitude of the problems they inherited. So they are in the position to say what time they need to be able to see whether they can successfully reposition the party.”
Asked if he saw the party surviving after President Muhammadu Buhari’s tenure, the lawmaker said the survival of the party was not about winning the election or having the president, “it’s about the consistency of our belief.”
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