The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, has said that he does not know the commitment of some of those who lost the party’s presidential ticket for the 2023 polls to the eventual winner, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Adamu made his position known when he spoke with newsmen on Thursday at the party’s secretariat in Abuja.
The Eagle Online recalls that some of those who lost to Tinubu in the primaries of the party on June 8, 2022 at the Eagle Square in Abuja included the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo (SAN); President of the Senate, Senator Ahmad Lawan; former Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi; and former Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godswill Akpabio.
While Akpabio has gone on to win the senatorial ticket of the party in Akwa Ibom State, Osinbajo, Lawan and Amaechi are not standing for elections in 2023.
Asked about the commitment of Osinbajo, Lawan and Amaechi to the party’s 2023 cause, Adamu said: “To the best of our knowledge, they are keying into this project.
“However, each of the aspirants at the convention is still alive and as journalists, you owe it a duty, having observed or having the state of mind that requires knowing where they stand today.
“It will be a bit absurd for me to start talking to them about things I feel you have not seen or heard from them.
“As for reconciliation, it is still a work in progress and we have been doing it.
“We have been talking to them and these guys are still very much around the political space.
“You can ask them whatever your observations are.”
On the reorganisation of the party’s workforce, for which he had been accused of having sacked some Directors and replaced them with his cronies, Adamu said: “The fact of the matter is, go round the secretariat, there is no one person who has come here who is a member of my family – primary or secondary.
“When we came here, we came to reorganise and reposition the party.
“You don’t see the party in a state of mess and just because you want to be decent because you don’t want to offend anybody, you allow the rot that you inherited to go on.
“We came and met the party where people were fixing all manner of things, the legal bill alone was over N7.5 billion.
“We came to find that here, everybody was like on his own.
“Everyone was just doing what they wanted to do, with no control, no system, no due process and just because you don’t want to be accused of anything, you just allow that kind of thing to go on. I am not that brand.
“My DNA has terrible allergies for that and I am sure most, if not all of my members in the NWC (National Working Committee) share in this.
“So, we found the necessity to reorganise the whole place and only God knows the extent of appreciation of the public that we got.
“Of course, every situation of change has its victims and ours will not be an exception we didn’t do anything with any bias or prejudice.
“The main thing is the interest of the party, to reposition it in an election year.
“We will be abused, we will be falsely accused.
“Of course, we are humans.
“I am not saying we couldn’t have made one or two mistakes, but the fact of the matter is that there is nothing we have done deliberately just to promote our own feathers.
“Recently, we tried to introduce table payment.
“We know we don’t have 200 people working here, but if you go to the payroll, you have over 200 people.
“Who are they?
“How did they come on our payroll?
“What are they doing for us?
“What is the nature of their jobs?
“Where are their letters of appointment?
“What qualifications do they have?
“You don’t because you want to avoid negative press and then not do this.
“We did everything in good faith and I don’t have any qualms about it.”
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