TONY JOHN, Port Harcourt

 

A good governance advocacy group within the All Progressives Congress (APC), the Rivers Unity House (RUH), in Rivers State, has thrown its weight behind calls for the resignation of the APC National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole.

Speaking to newsmen in Port Harcourt, RUH Convener, Kingsley Wali, said Oshiomhole was responsible for 96 percent of the challenges the ruling party faced in the 2019 elections.

Wali said: “It is a natural thing in politics that whenever there are loses, people have to be held accountable for those losses. There is need to identify the people who made it possible for the party to suffer any kind of loss.

“Just like if the party enjoys a decent measure of victory, it will obviously point out those who made it possible and then, compensate them for making it possible.

“So, those who are responsible for the body-blows APC received should be identified and made accountable, so it discourages this kind of attitude.

“I am one person who has been consistent with the position that Mr. Adams Oshiomhole is 96 percent responsible for the problems APC had. It boils down to nothing, but somebody feeling that he knows everything and no other person is smarter than him.

“I think the reasonable thing to do is for APC, as a party, to ask Adams Oshiomhole to vacate the seat. If we insist on understanding or characterising the next level slogan of APC, the kind of attitude that Adams Oshiomhole exhibited cannot be in tandem with the president’s vision on Nigeria,” he stated.

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The group lauded the APC Deputy National Chairman (North), Alhaji Lawan Shuaibu, for the courage to tell Oshiomhole to vacate his office.

The RUH convener said: “Of what is a party chairman who doesn’t take any form of criticism; once, even if it is one councillor in Karadamuda or Akassa, that says something about him, he replies in the same measure.

“Like the Deputy National Chairman said and I want to applaud the Deputy National Chairman (North), Alhaji Lawan Shuaibu, for what he said in the very elaborate letter he sent asking Mr. Oshiomhole to vacate office. That is a point that the man was running a one-man show.

“Like I said before, I worry because, where we are heading for might not be too nice. Like Alhaji Shuaibu said, all it takes for the PDP to control the National Assembly is two seats or six or seven stubborn APC senators.

“It is a done deal. And the same man is there threatening hell fire and brim storm about how APC will not do any business with PDP. In 2019, you still see the other party as party of enemies? Who does that?

“In other political climes, once you lead a party and the party does not do well on an election, you have to go. Let us not demean ourselves with the fact that we won the presidency. What about the governorship seats? Did we gain more senatorial seat now than we did in 2015? No. So, if you look at it properly, APC lost in this last election.

“We are just lucky that the profile of the president got us to where we are today, that we control the presidency,” Wali noted.