For the second time in a week, the meeting between the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the governors of the party, members of the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) as well as Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) Wednesday again failed to agree on a date to flag-off campaign.
The National Chairman of the party, Senator Abdulahi Adamu, was conspicuously absent at the meeting that lasted for over three hours.
The meeting was a follow up to last Wednesday’s tripartite committee meeting aimed at harmonising the party’s presidential campaign council list.
Recall that 422-member campaign list initially released created discord within the party with the governors, party leadership and stakeholders expressing dissatisfaction.
It was against this background that the campaign activities of the ruling party were put on hold indefinitely to ensure all hands were on deck and everyone carried along.
The meeting held at Transcorp Hotel Abuja started few minutes after 11a.m and ended 2:15 a.m. It had in attendance Tinubu, the Campaign Director General and Governor of Plateau state, Simon Lalong, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, party’s Vice-presidential candidate, Senator Kashim Shettima.
The governors at the meeting are: Governor Rotimi Akeredolu (Ondo), Dapo Abiodun (Ogun), Babajide Sanwo-Olu (Lagos), Atiku Bagudu (Kebbi), Dr. Abdulahi Ganduje (Kano), Abubakar Badaru ( Jigawa) ), Bello Matawale (Zamfara), Yahaya Bello (Kogi), Abubakar Bello (Niger), AbdulRahman Abdulrazaq (Kwara), Abdulahi Sule (Nasarawa), Lalong (Plateau), Dave Umahi (Ebonyi), Babagana Zullum (Borno) and Mai Mala Buni (Yobe).
Speaking with journalists after the meeting, the Director of New Media of PCC, Chief Fani-Kayode described the allegation by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that the ruling party was trying to stop the use of Bi-modal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) in the 2023 elections as ‘nonsense’.
His words: “The answer to that is absolute nonsense. It’s what you call poppycock. And these are the words of a drowning party spoken by a drowning man with a drowning candidate. There is nothing like that. We are above board, we are serious about what we are trying to do, we are going to achieve our objective, we are going to win this election fair and square. And they are the ones that have lost five governors. They’re the ones that can’t get their party leaders to come to their rallies at their presidential inauguration. We don’t have that challenge. We are working slowly but surely. As one together, everybody’s coming together. And I’m very proud to be part of this.”
Fani-Kayode noted that the meeting has put to rest any controversy on the campaign list.
According to him, *This meeting we just had as more or less clarified everything,. That is why the Publicity Secretary of the party is here, that is why all the four media directorates in the PCC were represented. Everybody was there, the governors, the PCC. We are all speaking as one, we all agree on everything. We’re working towards an objective which is to launch as soon as possible and to come out strongly and there’s really no hurry about this as far as we are concerned.”
Fani-Kayode noted that the ruling party had a very strong team, candidate, governors, as well as a very strong party input, adding that the PCC is waxing strong.
Also, the Spokesperson of PCC, Mr. Festus Keyamo (SAN) said the schedule of President Muhammadu Buhari, being the Chairman of the campaign council, was delaying the flag of the campaign.
He said Buhari’s schedule has to be put into consideration before a specific date would be fixed for the commencement of campaign.