The All Progressives Congress, APC, has called on President Goodluck Jonathan to join their train if he is tired of the crisis-ridden Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.
The interim National Chairman of the APC, Chief Bisi Akande made this call in Abuja yesterday.
Akande said that the party arms are open to anybody who is willing to come on board, “We listen to some people talking about presidency; no, we have not reached that stage at all. Our major preoccupation is to set up the structure of our party, the All Progressives Congress. It is after that, maybe in November or December when we hold our national convention, that our national executive will be elected; there is no idea about who becomes president, governor or anything. But the only exception is Anambra State and a committee is already working on that. And we are going to register our members in Anambra State. We are going to conduct congresses and elect a candidate that will contest on the platform of the APC.”
“In Nigeria today we don’t know any other APC apart from this All Progressives Congress, and we don’t contemplate anything and nothing will happen to move this APC out of place. We remain a party and we shall remain a party forever to rule this country, Nigeria,” Akande added.
The party chieftain who spoke yesterday during the party’s maiden press conference held at the party’s national secretariat, said the major aim of the APC now is to set up its platform and lay a solid foundation from the wards to the national level.
He further said that a committee led by the national deputy chairman, Hon. Aminu Masari, has been set up to advise the party on how to establish structures and activities below the level of the national interim executive.
He said: “People are anxious to be part of the APC, but because the party has not given the directive some people are just talking on behalf of the party. We are putting a stop to that. Any statement about APC should emanate from the national publicity secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed.
“And whatever he tells you, you should know, is the mind and the decision of APC. We are warning: all people arrogating positions to themselves are all unauthorised. All those who are printing papers, printing forms, calling rallies in the state in the name of APC, are not yet authorised. The authority will soon begin to flow down from the national level to the state level and to the local government. And when it is going to be done, the national publicity secretary will keep you informed. We want to be very careful and we want to do our things in a very orderly way. We are building a structure from the foundation to the top and not from the top down.
“The parties that held convention to merge are the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). Those three parties went to convention to certify that they wanted to merge into APC. But a chunk of APGA had indicated in their membership that they are going to join APC and almost the entire DPP had indicated that they are coming to join APC. And we don’t even close our door to PDP; if Jonathan is tired of the crisis in the PDP, he is welcome in the APC,” he added.
While reacting, the national publicity secretary of the PDP, Mr Tony Caesar Okeke, described the invitation as smacks of hypocrisy.
He said, “This is just very funny. This is the hypocrisy in the APC that we are talking about. One moment, they falsely shout that the president is incompetent; the next moment they are begging him to come and join them. Well, like one of our former leaders would say, we are just laughing.”
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