The National Secretary of All Progressives Congress (APC), Ajibola Basiru, has dismissed the speculations that party’s national chairman, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, will be sacked during its Caucus and National Executive Committee (NEC) meetings scheduled for September 11 and 12 respectively.
Speaking when the governor of Nasarawa State, Abdullahi Sule, paid the national leadership of the ruling party courtesy visit in Abuja on Friday, the party’s chief scribe admitted that the party leadership received Ganduje’s speculated sack with shock.
He cleared the air on the status of the party’s boss, emphasising that none of the scheduled meetings are for regime change in the party.
“None of these activities of the party is elective meeting. The National Caucus is established under Article 11 of the Constitution of our party as well as the NEC. They are part of routine meeting that our party should be having on a regular basis.
“But people like to twist events. Immediately we put up notice when the President told us about his availability, we read in the papers that the meetings (Caucus & NEC) is about changing the leadership of our party,” he explained.
The party’s scribe, in unfolded the agenda of the meeting, said: “None of these meetings are being scheduled for regime change in the party. It is being held to give stewardship of what has been done by the leadership of Ganduje in terms of also presenting our audit report to show what we have been doing as well as the way forward.
“This is very important to put in the public domain. We want to thank the governor of Nasarawa State for dropping by to see us in our house. We will be happy to continue receiving you and giving you support. We also thank President Bola Tinubu for the confidence reposed in us to continue to be a party of choice,” he noted.
In his reaction, Ganduje said: “We are so delighted to receive the Governor of Nasarawa State. I am so happy because this is the issue of the moment. When you come to a home with solidarity.
We want our party to be a strong institution that will back the government, one will ensure an internal democracy. The essence of the Progressive Institute we established is to give our party an identity.
“When you are looking for a medical doctor, you know where to get him. If you are looking for an accountant, it is also easy to get one. But politics is an environment that has no boundary. A politician must be someone of character, capacity and capability. Those are what we want to entrench in our party constitution,” Ganduje said.
Earlier, Governor Sule, while stating his mission noted that; “I am here to pay my respect to a man that deserves respect, to our national chairman, Ganduje. He deserves respect and deserves all the cooperation, especially at a time like this.”
“In the next couple of weeks, we have an election in Edo. So, the man does not need to be distracted in any other way so that we can go and win our election in Edo and that is one of the reasons why I came to encourage him to be focused.
“In reality, we have issues here and there. One of the places we have issues is the North Central. I am the chairman of the North Central governors forum. And in the zone, we have a state where there are issues and we had lengthen discussions also on that. We want him as well as the National Working Committee (NWC) to intervene and make sure that we resolve those issues.
“North Central has five out of six APC governors. For that reason, we need to strengthen our zone. We cannot afford any kind of disagreement in our zone. And I have no doubt that if there is any gentleman that can work to resolve that matter, it’s a man who has been in several positions. A deputy governor, a governor, a chairman, in fact so many other positions that he has been,” he praised.
