Oshiomhole raises the alarm over APC Leaders in gang up against him

The facade of a warm relationship between the national chairman of the All Progressives Congress, (APC) Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, other members of his National Working Committee on one hand and the governors have finally been exposed.

Newsflash247 findings revealed that despite the claim of a good working relationship, all is not well between Comrade Oshiomhole and certain key national officers of the APC who accused him of running a one-man show at the party national secretariat.

Also starting for a showdown with the former President of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), are some of the governors who felt shortchanged over his handling of the recent primaries that produced the ruling party standard bearers for elective offices ahead of 2019 general elections.

The exercise left some of the governors in the cold as their anointed for certain positions were sidelined.

A party source said that the aggrieved governors in league with some of the members of the NWC are waiting in the wings, seeking for the right opportunity to give the embattled Oshiomhole the same unsavoury treatment meted to his predecessor, Chief Odigie Oyegun.

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The embittered members of the national working committee have since confessed to the aggrieved governors that decisions on sensitive party matters were taken at Comrade Oshiomhole private office at Aso Drive, Asokoro, Abuja, without recourse to the entire NWC.

Chief Press Secretary to Comrade Oshiomhole, Simon Ebegbulem, in a press statement issued at the weekend confirmed the orchestrated plot to ease his boss out of the APC national secretariat.

Ebegbulem did not mention the governors but pointed fingers of scorn at some stakeholders not comfortable with what he called Comrade Oshiomhole’s vision to build institutional capacity for the APC.

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He said: “To be clear, Comrade Oshiomhole did not become national chairman of the governing party to bring it down a notch from the pedestal of its 2015 electoral victory let alone to preside over its liquidation.

“Rather, his single-minded goal, from the outset of his declaration of interest in the position, was to deploy his capacity in helping to strengthen and reposition the party as a truly supreme and disciplined political entity.

“Although, it might appear fortuitous to some persons that he became national chairman at the threshold of the 2019 general election; the truth is that there is no accident in predestination.

“We must appreciate the fact that it has pleased the Almighty God to place him in the saddle of APC leadership at this time for a purpose.

“The purpose has begun to manifest in its vast flourish and ramifications: instilling discipline, ensuring party supremacy, promoting due process, dealing with impunity and executive arrogance wherever they manifest to undermine intra-party electoral processes in the states.”

Comrade Oshiomhole further noted that those not comfortable with his resolve to restore party supremacy were up in arms against his noble agenda for the ruling party.

“From the outset, we never expected that those who cherished and supported the status quo, which Comrade Oshiomhole supplanted, would cave in easily under the magnitude of the current political revival that he spearheads.

“Indeed, while the progressives are enamoured of change, the conservatives find it difficult to embrace it. That is the current reality in the deliberate effort to rebrand the APC.

“Again, we were not, in the least, deluded that the process of rebranding or rewriting the narrative of the four-year-old party would be easy. What we are witnessing in the APC today is Comrade Oshiomhole’s adroit management of the strains and pains that accompany the birth of a resuscitated governing party.

“The leadership provided in the recently-held primary elections and the large-scale integrity of the processes are developments that should hence serve as exemplars in the administration of governing parties.

“Indeed, the message therein is very clear that the party, and not pseudo political empires in the states, has the power to superintend the primary elections for the nomination of the party’s candidates in the general election.

“While the party will not surrender its functions, which are constitutionally circumscribed, to any other entities, it will always be ready to moderate the divergent tendencies and mediate the disparate political camps in the interest of party cohesion.

“This is one of the hardnosed truths that the Comrade Oshiomhole-led NWC preaches and practises with an apostolic zeal to the chagrin of some influential stakeholders in the states.

Comrade Oshiomhole envisions an APC that is capacitated to pragmatically build a corpus of leadership and membership that do not only submit to the high ideal of party supremacy but also the credo of party discipline.

These-party supremacy and discipline- are two fundamentals that had been eroded even before the emergence of the Oshiomhole leadership. It is sad that while the national chairman is working round the clock, some stakeholders have thrown selfish political agendas into the mix to threaten the building of institutional capacity for the APC. ”

“These influential stakeholders, according to the grapevine, have begun to mobilise to pass a no-confidence vote in the leadership of Oshiomhole, having failed to impose their preferred candidates on the party in the nomination process.

“Rather than resort to needless perfidy at the threshold of a general election, we call on them to imbibe the spirit of sportsmanship, bolstered by the fact that the Oshiomhole leadership is propelled more by its interest in propriety in which victory for the party could be grounded. The crime committed by Comrade Oshhiomhole’s leadership is its disdain for impunity and circumvention of due process perpetrated in some of the states at the pleasure of some influential stakeholders.

“Overall, Comrade Oshiomhole has not, since stepping in the saddle, taken any unilateral decision in the running of the party affairs. All decisions, so far taken, passed through the mills of NWC deliberative sessions and enjoyed unanimous resolutions. The records are there. History will justify Comrade Oshiomhole and posterity will vindicate him.”

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