APC flays Sagay over remarks on officials, membership recruitment

THE leadership of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday came down heavy on Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Anti-corruption (PACAC), Professor Itse Sagay (SAN) for describing it as “the most unprincipled group of people who are “encouraging and accepting rogues” in the party.

The erudite constitutional lawyer was recently quoted in an interview as saying: “When I say ‘rogues’, I don’t mean stealing. In literature, when you say someone is a rogue elephant, it means people who are running riot and destroying the party.”

But the APC, in a statement in Abuja by its National Publicity Secretary, Malam Bolaji Abdullahi, likened the remarks to the conduct of a “a quintessential rogue elephant behaviour.”

Abdulahi described the professor’s utterances as an irresponsible act, adding it was surprising that an appointee of government would go out of his way to run down his benefactor.

Meanwhile, some members of the State Working Committee of the party in Enugu, led by Comrade Adolphus Ude, have distanced themselves and the entire political grouping from the call asking for the sack of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama for alleged underperformance.

They stated that the party neither took such decision nor asked its “suspended” chairman, Dr. Ben Nwoye to issue any statement in that regard.

Nwoye had made the call at the weekend but Ude, who claims to be acting state chairman, said Nwoye could no longer speak for the party after his “suspension”.