By Chinelo Obogo, Lagos
The National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, has defended the party’s former interim National Chairman, Bisi Akande, after the latter condemned the setting up of the party’s caretaker committee and the ongoing national registration and revalidation exercise.
Akande had last Thursday faulted the creation of the party’s caretaker and extra-ordinary convention planning committees and also criticised the ongoing membership registration and revalidation, describing it as wasteful.
He also condemned the Caretaker Executive Committee constituted by President Muhammadu Buhari last year, saying such authorities always end up in contempt.
Akande asked the party’s current leadership to resist the temptation of ‘sit-tight syndromes’ which he says usually characterises ‘most handpicked authorities in most underdeveloped countries of the world.’
Addressing journalists on Saturday at his Ikoyi residence in Lagos, Tinubu said he endorses Akande’s position because he hasn’t heard a situation whereby the party’s register submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) at the time of APC registration has been invalidated.
He described the party’s exercise as an update and revalidation of all those memberships, adding that despite the APC witnessing several congresses and exits, it had complied with the nation’s Electoral Act.
‘Since we have a foundation and that foundation is on which the structure up till the present was built at the time of the registration of this party, I will not fault Baba Akande’s position; I will not but endorse it,’ he stated.
‘What we are doing now is a matter of addition and subtraction, free entry and free exit. You have joined a particular party; you have decided to leave that party. You have equal opportunity for new members to join and update the existing register of the party.’
The APC leader was accompanied by Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwoolu and the Osun State Governor Gboyega Oyetola, who is a member of the party’s caretaker committee, alongside several party leaders in the state.
