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•Insists National Secretary deserves no apology, retraction
From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The crisis rocking the national leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) took a worrisome dimension, yesterday, as the North West Zonal Chairman, Salihu Moh Lukman, vowed not to apologise to the National Secretary, Iyiola Omisore, for alleging he was corrupt.
Omisore, through his solicitors, had issued a 48-hour ultimatum on Wednesday to Lukman to retract, apologise and pay N5million as damages for alleging he mismanaged Osun State governorship election campaign funds.
However, Lukman in a statement, yesterday, in Abuja, said Omisore deserved no apology. “Since Omisore’s response to the request for accountability is to threaten legal action, I have also instructed my lawyers to respond appropriately to his legal threat,” he said.
Lukman o said he would have opted for alternative resolution mechanisms in the party to sort out the issue, but claimed he was constrained as the National Chairman, Abdullahi Adamu and Omisore had frizzed the National Executive Committee (NEC) and National Caucus for over one year.
He stated this in a reply by his solicitors, Lexhill City Attorneys, signed by Martins Joseph.
“Our client believes that your client does not deserve any apology for the statement as it is within the constitutional right as a member to demand accountability from a national officer of the APC, which was built on the promise of accountability. As committed party member I insist that the challenges facing us as a party and as a nation are broadly political and limiting our actions to the courts may only distract us from initiating the right responses to resolve the challenge of facilitating negotiations for inclusive government under the leadership of Bola Tinubu as President of Nigeria.
“I want to restate that being leaders of the party, we are obligated to facilitate negotiations through our structures, namely NEC and National Caucus. Unfortunately, as things are, these structures have been frozen by our inactions as members of the National Working Committee (NWC) led by Adamu and Omisore.
“No meetings of these structures have taken place for almost one year that we came in. Inability to make these structures functional will weaken the capacity to regulate the conduct of party leaders and we risk creating a situation whereby challenges of inclusivity will be further compounded in the country.
“Already, individual Senators-elect and House of Representative members-elect have begun to aspire to positions of Senate President and Speake Reps in a very insensitive and reckless manner.
“May I once again remind all of us, both as leaders and APC members, that APC is a product of sacrifices and more than ever before the challenges we face today calls for sacrifiee and is resorting to acts of intimidation to perhaps manipulate processes of appointment into the Asiwaju-led Federal Government,” he noted.
Harping more on the need for accountability, Lukman wrote; “What makes democracy attractive is the requirement for accountability and Omisore must be held accountable. We need to have accountable leaders to the process of negotiations to be facilitated by the party.
“Finally, after 24 years of uninterrupted democracy, we must not shy away from initiatives that will strengthen internal contest within our party, APC. Part of the big challenge of Nigeria’s democracy is that internal contest is being destroyed. As a result, we produced situations where some leaders act as tyrants.
“Anyone who expresses views that are not in harmony with thinking of some leaders is condemned. This attitude is responsible for the destruction of PDP as a party and is gradually being entrenched in our party. There should be conscious effort to call these leaders to order. Both as party leaders and Nigerians, we must wake up to the reality that negotiation to form the next APC government under the leadership of Bola Tinubu must depart from the conventional approach of allowing leaders to emerge based on individual aspirations. We cannot risk any further complication of entrenchment of the existing religiously lopsided Muslim-Muslim identity of Tinubu and Shettima. No legal threat should distract us from addressing this challenge,” he warned.
