Clement Adeyi, Osogbo
Former interim national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Bisi Akande, has declared that opportunists who used the party in the past are leaving, ahead of the 2019 general elections.
Akande insisted that despite the crisis, in the wake of commissions and omissions, he vowed that himself, the national leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and President Muhammadu Buhari would salvage the party.
The former Osun State governor stated this in a statement in Osogbo, yesterday.
He disclosed that the party succeeded in unseating the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and must not be allowed to be cut off in its prime.
“To avoid the journey to the undertakers, we all agreed that prevention is often a wise counsel. Moreso for the APC, a party borne out of necessity, at a time Nigeria needed a life boat, a new lease of life.
“For the purpose for which it was birthed, it succeeded in unseating an incumbent government. And, for a higher purpose it is working hard to succeed at good governance. Nobody watches the child he birthed to die just like that.
“The responsibility to save the child comes suddenly upon the father. The APC cannot be allowed to wither away because of omissions and commissions. Times like this call for sacrifice and service. Of note is the saying that a real man, a hero, is known by where he stands in the time of adversity.
“Bola Tinubu, myself and President Buhari stand together in this effort to save APC from itself. Serving the nation has complex colours which constantly dazzle distant onlookers. The job at hand is not about Buhari. It is not about position-sharing. It is not about ethnic nationalism. It is about the strength and the beauty of one’s deeds at one time or the other. It is about our party, the APC, Buhari or no Buhari.
“Tinubu was a major participant in the emergence of APC. He must never be happy seeing it destroyed. Let APC be, no matter who may be lucky using it to gain power, make money, get famous, be such lucky ones born by Yoruba, Igbo or Hausa-Fulani. For as long as APC remains relevant, so long shall Bola Tinubu’s contributions to nation-building be magnified in Nigerian history.”
Akande, however, said those who constituted thorns in the flesh of the party and now defecting from it were not part of the initial dreams and efforts that birthed it but only used it as a platform for positions.
“Guess those who are problematic or now crossing away from APC were not part of its initial making. They must have joined after wrecking their old parties and, after the merger, became recognised and approved by the Independent National Electoral Commission, with a view to merely using APC as a platform for positions,” he noted.
The former governor called on party faithful to join hands with Buhari and Tinubu, “side by side, to make the party stronger and more attractive for other generations to use as a vehicle for political emancipation.”