North Central Must Retain APC Chairmanship – Vice Chair Tells Governors

• Salihu Mohammed Lukman, APC National Vice Chairman, warns that replacing former national chairman Abdullahi Adamu with Abdullahi Umar Ganduje would be detrimental to the party
• He argues that such a move would disrupt the zoning arrangement for the National Assembly leadership, which currently favors the North Central region
• APC governors have accepted the resignations of Adamu and the national secretary, Omisore, and a convention will be held soon

Salihu Mohammed Lukman, National Vice Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) for North West, has told governors who are party members and other critical stakeholders that replacing the party’s immediate past national chairman, Abdullahi Adamu, with a former governor of Kano State, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, would be suicidal for the party.

He argued that such a choice would completely distort the zoning arrangement that informed the current National Assembly leadership configuration.

“With the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Deputy Senate President both coming from North West and North Central, proposing that the party’s national chairman move from North Central to North West would be unjust and almost political suicide,” Lukman said. Following Adamu’s resignation last Sunday, APC stakeholders are reportedly tipping Ganduje for the position of national chairman.

The APC governors held an emergency meeting on Wednesday night to discuss Adamu’s resignation and Omisore’s resignation as national secretary.

Uzodinma told reporters after the governor’s meeting that the governors welcomed and supported Adamu and Omisore’s resignation.

He said;

Their resignation has been accepted by the leadership of the party. There is an acting chairman now and an acting secretary.

However, when asked whether Ganduje would be the next chairman of the convention, he declined to comment. He did, however, state that the convention would be held soon.

However, in a statement issued on Thursday in Abuja, Lukman said that nominating Ganduje for the seat before the party’s convention is the height of insensitivity and that the North Central must be allowed to retain the position.

The vice chairman, who was one of the strong voices that led to Adamu’s resignation, said;

Regrettably, however, many of the speculations do not share the commitment to either restore constitutional order in the party or return the party to its founding vision of returning to the path of progressive politics. In fact, if anything, some of the speculations, if true, will reduce to nonsense the decision to have a change of leadership, which means that no lessons have been learnt from all the circumstances of the last few years since the emergence of APC as a political party.

Already, part of the speculations emerging from the governor’s bloc is that Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje is being considered to succeed Senator Abdullahi Adamu. If this is true, it only suggests insensitivity and taking members of the party for granted. This is without prejudice to the person of Dr. Ganduje.

We must caution our governors that since the emergence of APC, governors have served almost as the conscience of the party. Any consideration for such an insensitive and unjust consideration of Dr Ganduje to become the national chairman of APC must be discarded.