Romanus Ugwu, Abuja

Fresh crisis has hit the All Progressives Congress (APC) as its Deputy National Chairman (North), Senator Lawal Shuaibu, demands the resignation of the National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, over alleged lack of capacity.

In a personal letter to the former Edo state governor, titled APC: “It’s fortunes vs misfortune, time to act”, Shuaibu decried what he called Oshiomhole’s highhandedness, which he claimed has crashed the fortune and goodwill the party gathered in 2015.

The party chieftain who said he had “nothing personal, except that I love this party and cannot keep quiet seeing it being brutally murdered,” lamented the failure of the party under Oshiomhole’s watch to consolidate the victory of the party at the governorship and National Assembly level.

The Zamfara-born politician said the APC had 23 states in 2015, but after the 2019 elections, it lost seven states while its number of senators dropped from 60 in 2015 to 57 in 2019. He said such a situation was absolutely unacceptable.

“It is my honest opinion that your ability to ensure this  party flourishes is deficient as you lack the necessary composure and you also don’t possess the capabilities and the requisite experience to run a political party.

“The respect APC was commanding among its members and sympathisers have been completely eroded, while the goodwill has equally evaporated with the type of attitude of threats to members you deploy, including senior members like governors, senators, ministers and other government officials whose functions do not fall within your jurisdiction.

“As I know, the relationship between party and government are cooperation and collaboration to ensure government programmes are implemented in line with the party manifesto, but not shouting and giving marching instructions to government officials on television screens or on the pages of newspapers, and more often than not, they call your bluff and make you look helplessly unimportant in the scheme of things”

“Please don’t get me wrong, do not think I am saying these about your conduct as chairman because I want to be chairman. I don’t want to be national chairman, because I can not be, even if I want to, for as long as President Muhammadu Buhari is in office, having come from the same North West geo-political zone.

“In advanced democracies, people who fail to add value or build over and above what they met on assumption of duty show some civilized examples, they honourably bow out. In that connection, therefore, I want to advise you to take the path of honour, to step aside and allow the party to embark on the onerous task of reconstruction and rehabilitation in those states it was weakened by the effect of manner the last primary election exercises were conducted or even the task of recreating the party where it is on the path of extinction, arising from the loss of a sitting APC government.

“For example in Zamfara State, where you directly personally created the problem, leading to the painful complete loss of APC’s electoral fortunes, from up to down. All these are uncontestably facts. You cannot exonerate yourself from blame on what happened to APC Zamfara State, thereby destroying the hopes and aspirations of 534,541 APC members and supporters, including my good self,” he noted.

While highlighting the faulty processes, he accused the chairman of altering some sensitive decisions taken during the NWC meetings and taking meetings of the national leadership of the party to his personal residence.

“NWC meetings, in my own experience, shall not be held in private residences, especially where it involves thousands of party men and women with grudges over injustice meted out on them by officials of the party. The party secretariat is the officially recognised venue of such meetings, unless if there are other motives for keeping away from there.

“For every meeting of any organ of the party, there shall be minutes of the meeting reflecting every decision taken at such meeting. Most of the meetings held and fundamental decisions purported to have been taken were not backed by minutes.

“The few meetings that were covered by the secretariat and minutes taken could clearly show that final decisions of the NWC were altered! Example was the unanimous decision by NWC to allow Aisha Alhassan, former Minister of Women Affairs to go and contest with her co-aspirants at the primaries in Taraba State, which decision was overruled by you. You single-handedly disqualified her and numbers in the party got depleted and thereby weakened. So also, several other aspirants that you personally disqualified without just cause.

“Arising from such conduct, the APC ended up with severe injuries and is today badly fractured in virtually every constituency in this country, resulting in the erosion of the massive goodwill that you met the party with.

“Apart from the president, more than 60 per cent of members including those that contested elections under the APC in 2019 are not happy with the process as it left a lot to be desired. We have court cases in every state, by far much more than it was in 2015 and I wonder how much money the party is likely to spend on litigations arising from mistakes of the national chairman in not adhering to due process and side-lining transparency.

“Committees for primaries became secret affair to the extent that not even members of the NWC were aware of how certain committees were constituted with members mostly from Edo State outnumbering every other state and in some instance,” he said.

Ex-raying the incidents that culminated in the misfortunes suffered by the party in the 2019 election, he said: “Under normal circumstances, when you take over as a project manager, it is expected that you bring to bear, your wealth of experience to the new job, which will be seen in your capacity and capabilities as value addition.

“In a political party like the APC, you are expected to also introduce new approach to strategies through committees that will work and submit recommendations to you towards improving on the current fortunes of the party. It is expected that for every decision credited to the party, it should be the result of a meeting where resolutions are passed by the working committee.

“It is also expected that policies by the party are always alI-inclusive and never one-sided and to cap it up, no unilateral decisions should be made to represent the opinion of either the NWC, the National Executive Committee or even the least, the National Caucus. National chairman cannot assume the powers of the NWC,” he said.

He expressed disappointment that the ruling party’s members at the National Assembly have to practically knee down to members of the opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to win the statutory positions for the party.

Shuaibu attributed the development to the comment of Oshiomhole that no PDP Senator would be appointed as Committee Chairman except the committees statutorily meant for the opposition members of the Senate.

“That is never the tradition of the legislature anywhere! The Legislature is the house of collaboration and lobby and you can never succeed with hostile approach, you must lobby, seek cooperation of members across party divides. If you don’t know, you have made the situation worse than it seems,” he wrote.

Efforts to get Oshiomhole’s reactions proved abortive. However, a group under the auspices of APC Middle Belt Vanguard issued a 14-day ultimatum to Shuaibu to apologise to Oshiomhole or face the wrath of the party national leadership.

The statement signed by the  president and secretary, Musa Ohimini Alechenu and Meliga Godwin, respectively, said the view of the deputy chair did not represent the feelings of the other members of the NWC.

“It is on record that people like Shuaibu are not comfortable with the kind of discipline the national chairman is instilling in the affairs of the APC since he assumed office in June 2019. In every society, reforms don’t come easy and it is very unfortunate that at this point in time, Senator Shuaibu and his co-travellers will expect business as usual.

“It may suffice you to note that the introduction of direct primaries by the Oshiomhole-led NWC has helped in bringing the people closer to the party and it was evident in the total support our President, Muhammadu Buhari enjoyed across the country in the last general election.

“Besides, we want to remind Shuaibu that most of the issues we had in some states were crisis that existed before Oshiomhole took over as national chairman of our great party, particularly in Imo and Rivers states. This is just a case of calling a dog a bad name so you can hang it. It is on record that Oshiomhole led NWC inherited several crisis in the party and it is only his traducers who will be blind to those facts.

“Therefore, we pass a vote of confidence on the National chairman of our great party, Oshiomhole and we advise those fuelling crisis in the party to desist from it as we are solidly behind the leadership of this great party. We admonish Shauibu to settle his personal issues with his boss and stop being a willing tool used to cause disaffection in the party.”