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From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The crisis rocking the All Progressives Congress (APC) took a disturbing turn on Monday as the APC Progressive Youth Movement inaugurated a Caretaker Committee to conduct the party’s National Convention in February next year, sacking the Governor Mai Mala Buni-led Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee.
Chairman of the APC-PYM Caretaker Committee, Mustapha Audu, who made the disclosure after the inauguration of the Committee in Abuja, gave the party’s national leadership January 3 ultimatum to vacate the national secretariat.
He further disclosed that they will not only write to the Buni-led Committee next week to hand over to them and vacate the national secretariat but will also write an audit firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers, to thoroughly look into the accounts of the ruling party since the Caretaker Committee took over last year.
Announcing the sack of the Buni-led Caretaker Committee, he said: “This is the new APC Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee. It is clear that there are issues in our great party and we all know that there is a constitutional lacuna we are facing and the opposition is not happy with what is going on.
“The composition of the sacked APC was in clear violation of the party and Nigeria constitution but we have resolved that constitution lacuna and we ate no longer unprepared for the 2023 general elections. To show you the power of young people, we met just a week ago in Kaduna and fixed our Convention for February 2022 only for the governors to Assemble in Abuja 24 hours after.
“They went to the President claiming that he has agreed on the same February. We met with Mr President in January and he told us to go all out and change the narrative.
“There is enough problem existing already and the majority of it came from the governors. In order to fix the problems as youths, we have to stand up bravely and boldly to face the challenges. We are going in to reconcile the APC hand in hand with party leaders and we are not going to chastise anybody.
“Today is the day that the story of ‘youths are leaders of tomorrow’ ended. Today, we are leaders of here and now and we will change Nigeria. We have been recognised by Mr President and by all the members of the party. I can tell you that the leaders are currently scrambling and having meetings on how to align with us.
“This Caretaker Committee has sacked the Buni-led Caretaker Committee and stands devolved, disbanded and no longer represent the APC members. As the new committee, we will take up the monumental task of reconciliation,” he said.
On why they did not zone the presidential ticket, he said; “we recognize zoning and our task is for the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party. We don’t want to go outside of our mandate. We are worried that those issues that occurred before where Committees were given a mandate, go out of the mandate given to them. We want to show that we know how to follow the rules and deliver on our responsibility perfectly.
Asked where they will operate from after dissolving the Buni-led Committee, he said: “We will be writing formally to the Buni-led Caretaker Committee next week to tell them to vacant the office for us to occupy.
“We will also demand a handover note, we will also write to PricewaterhouseCoopers to do a thorough audit of the accounts of the APC since June last year when the Buni-led Caretaker Committee was inaugurated to establish the exact state of things.
“However, we will not fall into the same trap young people fell into with the EndSARS situation. We will never be confrontational. We will follow the laws to the letters in informing them when to vacate for us to move in. Because we are young people that need to set the pace, we will be hiring another office to act temporarily until they vacate come January 3, 2022,” he warned.
Announcing the zoning of the national leadership to be contested on February 26, 2022, the group disclosed that the North will produce the National Chairman, Deputy National Chairman, South while the Dep National Chairman North will be a female all except the Chairman must be 45 years and below.
The National Secretary, South, National Legal Adviser will come from the North, National Treasure, South, National Financial Secretary, National Organising Secretary, North, National Publicity Secretary, South, among other positions.
