Following the postponement of their national convention for about four times since 2020, All Progressives Congress is finally set to hold the exercise.
Recall that the party has in the past stirred up controversy over heated crisis on who becomes its next chairman.
APC disclosed on Friday that it would go into the convention with a “Unity list”, outlining its consensus options for every elective office, a report by Vanguard said.
Speaking at a briefing in Abuja, Chairman, Convention Sub-committee on Media and Publicity and Nasarawa State governor, Abdullahi Sule, also added that in line with the Electoral Act 2022, political appointees will not be allowed to vote as delegates except where such appointees are “statutory delegates” by virtue of the elective positions they might have held in the past.
He said, “Before you go into the convention, our first choice is always consensus and we are still on that first choice. However, democracy demands, even our party constitution demands and the constitution of Nigeria demands that if that doesn’t work, we will go ahead and look at the other options. But right now, that remains our option number one.
“On the issue of political appointees, our delegates are actually statutory delegates. So if you have a former president as a political appointee, if you have a former senator as a political appointee, these are already automatic delegates, you know, so let us not confuse the two just because being an appointee doesn’t necessarily take you out of being a delegate, because our delegates are classified, clearly. The former president on our party platform, former elected this, elected that, party officials and the rest of that. I don’t think anybody who holds any political party office is actually right now a political appointee of the President, or the governors and the rest of that.
“So, most of the list that we submitted, you know, if you are talking of the ones we have submitted now, we don’t have commissioners, we don’t have advisers, we don’t have all those unless if somebody particularly was a former this or former that, in that case, you know, just being an appointee doesn’t completely exclude such a person, you know, from being a delegate.
“The issue of unity list will be ready today (Friday). It will actually be submitted and somebody was asking whether it is for real we are going to have a unity list or not, of course, yes, if you are talking of consensus, you must have a unity list, because that is the whole essence of consensus. You know, if you are having consensus, you are going to have people who have agreed, aspirants who have agreed, stakeholders who have agreed, and also the constituency that has agreed, and in that case, the name automatically will be adopted. And that is just the meaning of the unity list. That is how the unity list is going to be put together.
“On the arrangement for the consensus. I think anybody who has been following up with the activities of Mr President and the party will understand that so many things have been going on towards consensus. Mr President has met with the governors, met with the aspirants for the chairmanship, met with the National Assembly is meeting also with all the major stakeholders of this party and the rest of that. If you look at that, that is actually an arrangement towards a consensus.
“One thing I can tell you clearly, the leadership of this party, the stakeholders of this party, the governors are united.”
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