Former Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu, has backed the call for the resignation of the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Adams Oshiomhole.
It would be recalled that the Deputy National Chairman of the APC (North), Lawal Shuaib, had last Tuesday, urged Oshiomhole to tender his resignation letter following the Supreme Court’s nullification of the party’s primaries in Zamfara State.
In a letter he had made public few days ago, Lawal said the APC national chairman has performed below expectation, and therefore, should resign.
However, Shittu said if Oshiomhole was allowed to remain, APC would go down when President Muhammadu Buhari’s second term was over.
Speaking with newsmen on the call for Oshiomole’s resignation, the former minister said, “I endorse it.”
He said, “The truth is with Oshiomhole this party would go down by the time President Muhammadu Buhari finishes his 2nd term.
“Oshiomhole is full of himself and he has an ego problem, and wants to dominate every environment, and democracy is not like that.
“I know that many of us who are conscionable members of the party who think of the future of this party, and the fact that this party should continue to be relevant even after President Muhammadu Buhari has left office, I would stand by this call. We are concerned and everything that we can do to force him out, we will do it”
Meanwhile, another leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), has called for the National Chairman of APC, Adams Oshiomhole, to step aside in the interest of the party.
A chieftain of the APC in Rivers State, Kingsley Wali, who is the latest to make this call, said Oshiomhole was responsible for the predicament the party suffered in different parts of the country in the build-up to the just-concluded general elections.
Wali, who is a lawyer, said that APC as a party should take a collective decision to ease out Oshiomhole to avert further damage to its fortunes.
He stated that the APC national chairman has been running a one-man show which is not in tandem with the vision of President Muhammadu Buhari.
“I have been consistent with my view that Adams Oshiomhole was 95 per cent responsible for the problems APC had. You have a man who believes that whatever he says is final and then turned a political party to a labour union.
“For me, if Oshiomhole is a responsible person which I doubt because I can tell you for free, Zamfara may not be the end of the story. There are a lot of cases in court.
“The reasonable thing for APC as a party to do is to ask Oshiomhole to vacate his seat so that a new orientation can come in that will help the party move forward.
“If we insist on characterising the Next Level slogan of the APC, the attitude that Adams Oshiomhole exhibited cannot be in tandem with the present vision of Nigeria. The man was running a one-man show.
“In every decent political clime, once you lead a party and the party did not perform well you have to go. Let us not delude ourselves because we won the presidency, what about the governorship seats.
“What is in the public domain is that Adams Oshiomhole is hell-bent on making sure that Obaseki doesn’t come back, Yahaya Bello doesn’t come back, Akeredolu doesn’t come back, I don’t know his interest in Bayelsa State.
“In every democracy, the sitting President or the sitting governor is given a right of first refusal. It will interest you to know that the Deputy National Chairman of APC, Senator Lawal Shuaibu had in a letter requested that the National Chairman of APC, Adams Oshiomhole should resign for leading the party to failure in the 2019 elections.”
Also, the dust generated by the call by the Deputy National Chairman (North) of the All Progressives Congress APC, Senator Lawali Shuaibu asking the National Chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole to resign is yet to settle.
This is because yesterday, national officers of the party who are not members of its National Working Committee NWC demanded an urgent interface with the NWC to discuss the matter. The officers are however members of the APC National Executive Committee NEC.
The party officials under the aegis of forum of Non-National Working Committee (Non-NWC) in a letter signed by their Chairman, Alhaji Nasiru Danu and the Secretary, Hon. Omolayo O. Akintola, said the meeting had become necessary to discuss emerging issues before they get out of hand.
There have been calls by some stakeholders of the party asking the NWC to convene a NEC meeting to resolve issues which arose from the conduct of the last general elections and also forge a common front ahead of the composition of the next cabinet by President Muhammadu Buhari.
However, in the leaked letter dated 29th May, 2019 and titled: “Demand for an urgent interface with NWC organ of our party-APC” and addressed to the National Chairman, the national officers said the meeting is “principally to address critical issues affecting our great party before such issues go out of hands which could be inimical to the general welfare of the party.”
The forum said it would have called for such meeting earlier, “but we considered the concluded 2019 general elections as determinant or our Party’s survival which had come and gone with successes and losses.
“This body rose from her today‘s (29-05-2019) emergency meeting shortly after the Presidential inauguration ceremony held at the Eagle Square, Abuja and concluded the following request be made.
The forum said it would have called for such meeting earlier, “but we considered the concluded 2019 general elections as determinant or our Party’s survival which had come and gone with successes and losses.
“This body rose from her today‘s (29-05-2019) emergency meeting shortly after the Presidential inauguration ceremony held at the Eagle Square, Abuja and concluded the following request be made.
“We hereby request for a meeting to be fixed from your end as soon as possible in order to meet with the urgency it demands.” The letter addressed to the National Chairman also copied the chairman of the APC Governors Forum, Atiku Bagudu of Kebbi state.