Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, the National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has refuted general notion that an emergency meeting of the party is needed to tackle emerging crisis in the APC ahead of the forthcoming Edo State governorship primaries.
He told journalists at the party’s national secretariat that no such meeting is required, declaring that National Working Committee which met on Monday remains the administrative arm of NEC of the party.
Onilu also allayed fears that the party is poised for a fresh round of crisis over the Edo State governorship primary saying that it was wrong to tag what is happening in Edo as crisis but contestations of differing interests which is expected in politics.
“I don’t know about any crisis. Go from state to state, when you have politics you have conflicts and conflict to those of us who are practising politics is not crisis, it is contestation of interest. And if you go to any other state, you have things that are similar. The only difference this time is that you have the national chairman happened to be from Edo.”
“Otherwise there is nothing strange in what is going on in Edo. What is important is that at the end of the day, whether the national chairman, whether governor, everybody is subjected to the same rule.
Why should there be emergency meeting, what is the emergency on- on Covid-19?”
Onilu also shade light on the display of credentials of the six governorship aspirants seeking the ticket of the party, pointing out that APC does not want a repeat of the Bayelsa experience.
Asked if the party is approaching the security agencies and various institutions the aspirants claimed in the course of verifying the claims, Onilu said the APC is open to any assistance it can get to avoid what happened in Bayelsa.
“You know that it had been said that experience is the best teacher, we’ve had experience that are not so palatable. We have had experiences that are so shocking and we won’t be doing the right thing if we don’t learn from those experiences.”
“You will recall what happened in Bayelsa, we thought we did the best we should, but it turned out that we did not do enough. So, the best thing we have to do now is to go beyond ourselves to the things that may not be known to us.”
“Besides the fact that we have put (their credentials) out here for anybody who has information to help the screening committee, we are also taking official steps to verify some of these documents to be sure that we do the right thing and we come out clean.”
“By merely putting it on the board here, making it transparent, putting it before the public, it does mean that people who know them very well; school mates, aquintances, friends and even enemies could come up with whatever they have. We are expecting help from whatever angle it could come from.”
“All we are interested in is that we ensure transparency, is to ensure that we comply with iur own constitution, the electoral act and the Constitution of this country. Give everybody a fair chance and to be seen to have done our best”
