INSIDEPOLITICS N/Assembly leadership: PDP warns against witch-hunt

Lack of cohesion caused APC leadership debacle – Group

An amalgamation of All Progressives Congress (APC) support group has blamed the party’s lack of cohesion as the cause of the crisis that happened at the National Assembly.

The group under the aegis of Alliance of APC Support Groups said the party should have avoided the chaos by handling the matter in an appropriate manner.

The group’s chairman, Eng. Abdul-Sabur Oliyide, while addressing a press conference in Abuja, said the inability of the APC to secure positions for its preferred candidates was due to poor management of the situation.

“We also believe that as a party we have faced greater challenge in the history of the party and have come out of it greater and stronger so such abysmal failure shouldn’t have happened,” it said.

The group commended the party for its reaction, saying it must be active to confront members that go contrary to its laid down rules while allowing popular choices to prevail.

“We appreciate the strong statement on the issue by the party…but it was obvious that there was too much assumption and lack of discipline among the rank and file of the party, which ought to have been nipped in the bud much earlier,” it added.

The group however advised that the party should have left the lawmakers to take their decision while it provides the appropriate guidance which it had attempted to do, warning that if the party tried to foist an unpopular decision on its members it may cause division which will affect the Buhari administration.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has cautioned the presidency and the All Progressives Congress (APC) against any attempt to intimidate or harass the Clerk of the National Assembly, Alhaji Salisu Maikasuwa and the National Assembly Service Commission over their conduct in the process that led to the emergence of a new leadership for the National Assembly.

The PDP in a statement by its national publicity secretary, Olisa Metuh, said yesterday that any attempt by the APC to transfer what it called its ‘frustration’ would amount to witch-hunt and victimisation.

The party said the undertone of the statement by presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, that the clerk was adequately requested to shift the time for the inauguration to enable the President address the APC legislators but ignored it “amounts to putting undue pressure on civil servants in the National Assembly for performing their legitimate duties and sends a serious signal which should not be ignored.”

He said the APC has displayed arrogance and disrespect for the dictates of the constitution by attempting to adjust the president’s promulgation order on the National Assembly and seeking to put its interest over and above the supreme law of the land.

“It is a clear mark of disrespect to the constitution for the president and his party to fix a meeting for him to address their legislators the same time he had directed the assembly to be inaugurated in line with the constitution.

“For 16 years that PDP nurtured democracy in this country, there was never a day it attempted to arm-twist or intimidate the bureaucracy of the National Assembly to do its bidding given our recognition and respect for the independence and sanctity of the legislative arm,” the statement said.

The party noted that the position of the APC and the presidency clearly negates President Buhari’s statement that he belongs to everybody and belongs to nobody as Nigeria’s president saying rather than vilify the Clerk of the National Assembly, the APC should commend him for his stand which they said helped minimise the embarrassment the shifting would have caused.