Criticisms have been trailing the outcome of your party primaries. You are aware that the Director-General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON), Osita Okechukwu, a senatorial aspirant in Enugu State, accused the party national chairman of impunity. What is your reaction?
He is a highly respected and senior member of our party, but you can also understand that this is not about him and the party. It is about his quest to pick the senatorial ticket of his district and that is about ambition. When that did not happen-like the Yoruba would say, you won’t beat a child and say he must not cry. He has a right to ventilate his anger and it is for the party to also listen to him. He may have gone overboard making all sorts of unfounded allegations, but you also have to understand the situation that he is now, he lost out. If that same process had favoured him, he would be in his office in an air-conditioned atmosphere, drinking coffee and taking a laugh at whoever was complaining. But that didn’t happen, so you would expect him to complain. There would be someone to blame in such a situation. Unfortunately, he has picked on the national chairman. But the chairman has no blame in this.
If you have issues with the process, you can complain about the process. We have an appeal panel: you could take recourse to that. The internal mechanism for dispute resolution of this party is fairly strong and responsive and it is there for every party member, no matter high or low to access. And a lot of people have done that and a lot of such issues have been resolved. If he has very good reasons to have redress, he would get that. But he has chosen to go that path (media) which is quite unfortunate. It is not everybody who has lost an election that has the capacity to soak it in. Some must express themselves in the way Osita Okechukwu has chosen to go about it. It is not about the national chairman, like I have said. It is about the fact that he is a party to the dispute and in such a situation, not everybody would win, some must lose. He lost it in his reaction to it; everything he said was completely at variance with the real situation.
He also accused the chairman of nepotism and listed names of nine party chieftains from Edo State who were given positions as chairmen of congresses in nine states. Incidentally, Comrade Oshiomhole is from Edo State. What is your take on this weighty allegation?
There are five members for each state on the panel (which conducted the primary). We have 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) for the National Assembly and he (Osita Okechukwu) mentioned only nine panel chairmen (from Edo State). Definitely, the others are from some states. By the time you add up the figures, you find out that the appointment of nine cannot be called nepotism in a situation where you have 36 states. When you pick what suits your cause (that is what he has done) but by the time all the facts are laid, there are no issues. Everything boils down to the fact that he lost out and he is not happy about it. There must be a culprit; somebody must be blamed for it.
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Ogun State governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, alleged that the process in the state was stage managed from Lagos. He further alleged that the duo of Senator Bola Tinubu and Chief Olusegun Osoba meddled with the process. What actually happened in Ogun?
It is a straight forward case. If we speak to the merit of this case, the whole world saw it; the visuals were everywhere, where the Ogun State governor gathered some aspirants and stakeholders and said clearly, there won’t be primaries and right there he pointed at who the next governor, senator and House of Representatives candidates would be. He named himself as the next senatorial candidate. Even if they have accepted those people, it is against the procedure, especially for a governor to openly say a thing like that. It was clearly stated that the party gave two options which is the direct and indirect primaries and you are to have stakeholders’ meetings where the majority are to decide.
In the case of Ogun, after that exercise failed; after they tried to handpick who will be what, they sent a letter that they had agreed on direct primary and the party had no choice than to endorse what you want. On the day they all came for screening including the governor, he suddenly left with other aspirants and returned to Abeokuta. He gathered some people and came back to meet the APC NWC that they wanted indirect primary and the other aspirants said we were all here together; that they didn’t know when this change was made.
Meanwhile, someone had gone to court and the court had barred the state executive from anything to do with the party. But we all saw on the national television where the state governor and the state executive actually conducted their own primary and the process threw up the governor’s preferred candidate. It was the Secretary to the State Government (SSG) in Ogun State who was reading the result until it occurred to him that he had no power to announce the names. He handed over to the state chairman of the party who also should not have done that; he is statutory barred as the court had told him not to participate in the primary. Secondly, the state chairman has no power to conduct primary; that power resides with the NWC. So whatever the governor did was self-help and there is no provision for self-help in the party’s constitution. Eventually the NWC panel that was constituted to conduct the primary went to Abeokuta and did the primary. The governor’s preferred candidate chose not to participate in that exercise. So the party stands by the result of that primary it conducted in Ogun State.
The governor has done his best to get validation for his self-help. That is not possible. The first thing he did was to start saying things that made it look like something wrong has happened when nothing of such has happened. Secondly, he took some traditional rulers to meet the president. I am surprised because someone like him, with due respect to him, should have understood the nature of the president we have; that no matter how close you are to him, he will listen to you but he will ask for the rules to be followed.
The next thing we heard was he was looking for whom to blame and Senator Bola Tinubu and Chief Olusegun Osoba readily came to his mind and he blamed them for that. The question to ask is whether they were the ones who gave directive to him to organise his own primaries or they were the ones who instructed him not to participate in the primaries or his candidate not to participate in primaries the party organised. I think he should self-appraise and ask himself; have I done the right thing? Am I asking for what is fair? Am I not putting the party in a position to ask them to do what’s wrong? Those are the questions we expect the governor of Ogun State to ask himself. He needs to self-appraise, look at the actions he has taken and come to that conclusion that he’s taking the wrong route.
In Kaduna State, the Professor Osunbor-led Appeal Panel upheld Senator Shehu Sani as the party candidate, but suddenly Uba Sani’s name, the Special Adviser to Governor Nasir el-Rufai, was the one the NWC submitted to INEC. Did Oshiomhole succumb to the Kaduna governor’s demand?
It was the outcome of a primary, properly conducted. The party tried to protect its members in the National Assembly for obvious reasons following what has been going on in the National Assembly. We know the carrots that had been dangled at them. We have a responsibility to ensure that we have a grip on the legislative arm of government so that we can run a smooth government. So we tried to protect our legislators. But the other people can only understand and accept that. If they say no, there is nothing the party can do. It is within their right to say we must go to the field. The initial effort of the party did not get the blessing of the other people in that area who was also entitled to bid for positions. The primaries were eventually conducted, but Senator Shehu Sani opted out; he relied on the earlier decision. At the end of the day, no matter what plan you have, even though you are acting on expediency and rule of law, democracy will prevail. It was democracy that prevailed in Kaduna.
INEC insisted that APC was not eligible to field candidates in Zamfara State since it didn’t conduct primary. Are you presenting candidates, despite the commission position?
We submitted list of candidates for legislative elections in Zamfara State. If INEC did not take it, it is a different thing. We have a right to submit and INEC has the legal responsibility to receive. INEC cannot disqualify candidates and we all know that. We have said clearly that whatever claims that INEC is making is not correct or a true representation of what happened and we will continue to take progressive steps to ensure that INEC does what is right.
Rivers State appears to have a case similar to Zamfara. What is the party’s reaction to the apex court judgment on the crisis in APC Rivers?
The Supreme Court ruling on the Rivers APC governorship primaries has been subjected to different interpretations. As at today, the party has not yet taken a position on the ruling. We have a legal department and they will look into it and do what is right on it. The party will come out clearly on its position after studying the judgment.
Who is the authentic candidate of your party in Imo State between Uche Nwosu and Senator Hope Uzodinmma?
The issue of submission of governorship candidates to INEC falls due on November 2nd, so we haven’t reached the stage of where we will submit names or beat the deadline. You are aware that there was a court action challenging the Imo APC governorship primary election. The position of the party is that whatever court judgment, good or bad, we must comply with it. We will only decide who will be the APC governorship candidate for Imo State by November 2.
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