Committee Chairman vindicates them with Ondo case
By Toyo C. Ngem
MORE facts have emerged about the Asiwaju
Bola Tinubu’s reception of the newly constituted National Caretaker Committee
of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on the night of Thursday, July 2, 2020. There
were indications that Tinubu, as National Leader of the Party, was down to
heart and frank in telling truth to the face of the committee members.
He was reported to have expressed
his disappointment that the “APC was never conceived as a tumbledown” it is now
swerving to. He urged the Governor Buni-led Committee to take it upon itself as
an emergency duty, the mission to reverse the drift to the abyss by ensuring
that party supremacy remains sacrosanct.
Chief Bisi Akande also told the
Committee that it was time the party separated grains from the shafts in its membership
in order to purify itself.
Outside his residence while
addressing the press after the meeting, Tinubu said the meeting was not about
settlements of quarrels. He described it as needful “consultations” desired for
sustainability of the party’s progressive ideals.
He said: “The Caretaker Committee is
on consultation. We have never been divided. In politics, there can be
disagreement. There are instances where you disagree but it doesn’t mean that
you cannot discuss it and be a good example in leadership and politics”.
Also speaking along this line, the
Chairman of the Committee, Mai Mala Buni, said the visit was like a compass the
members needed for direction in the task of strengthening the party.
He
said: “The task before us is daunting and we need guidance, experience and
prayers from our leaders”.
Civics
Journal however gathered from a source close to the meeting that what
happened inside “could be likened to what the Yoruba would describe as a frank
talk between two siblings of same mother that locked up themselves in a room to
mutually tell truth to each other”.
According
to the source, Tinubu told the Committee in clear terms that the party
leadership now harboured ‘a sangh of desperate ambitionists’ pushing their
course with morbid obsession that is inimical to the party’s survival.
The source referred this writer to Tinubu’s
observation earlier raised in March this year when he said the crisis rocking
the National Working Committee (NWC) was a symptom of a political disease
called ‘ambition-virus 2023’ that had infected the party.
Titled 2023: A different form of ailment, as this this magazine would
recall, Tinubu then observed thus: “There is a new sickness that seems rampant…
(Identified as) old ambition-virus 2023, (it) afflicts the political class
along with their allies in the media… The primary symptoms of their malady is
the driving tendency… geared toward obsessive jockeying for position to control
and manipulate a race still three years away (the 2023 election).
“In doing so, they recklessly
undermine the very party which they claim to serve and weaken the
administration of President Buhari to which they claim to be loyal… As such,
their actions border on pathological.
“True, ambition is inherent in human
endeavor. Without it, nothing great is achieved. However, strong ambition
applied in the wrong way has never done anything positive… at best, it results
in something worse” – parentheses are
this writer’s.
Connecting
this to what transpired behind the closed door, the source said Tinubu told the
Committee that the party would hardly be stable if the threat of desperate
ambition of a clique of members was not eliminated.
The
source said: “This is to say that Asiwaju only ceased the opportunity to
reiterate and clarify on this observation in order to make his own contribution
as to what direction he feels the Committee should look to in its bid to
reposition the party.
“Even though Asiwaju acknowledged that
political party exists in part for individuals to aspire to any level of
electoral office, he expressed regret that the antics of the ‘ambitionists’
clique had included clever decoy that hid their interest behind the falsehoods
of imaginary ambitions they phantom for others in order to disdain victims of
their sly power game as a cruel way to achieve their goal”.
The
source also added that the APC stalwart did not fail to restate his position on
the rumour of his presidential ambition, which “many people have mischievously”
linked to the dissolved NWC crisis.
The
source went further: “I want to believe that you already know what is Asiwaju’s
stand on the rumour of his presidential ambition. He touched this in his
official response to the dissolution of Oshiomhole-led NWC not long ago. He yet
re-emphasized on this to his visitors. He described it to be far more a
malicious propaganda being blindly bandied by the media and individuals
fronting for his traducers for whatever reasons best known to them”.
In
the said official statement referred to as this magazine would recall, Tinubu
said he could only pity those behind the mischief.
He
said: “To those who have been actively bleating how the President’s action and
the NEC meeting have ended my purported 2023 ambitions, I seek your pity… I
have made no decision regarding 2023 for the concerns of these hours are
momentous enough”.
The
source thus concluded that “Perhaps it was on account of this that he (Tinubu) also
advised the Committee to be wary of information they would work with because
they were bound to encounter truths that are stranger than fiction, which could
mislead it wrongly”.
Civics
Journal also gathered that Chief Bisi Akande, the pioneer National Chairman
of the party, also identified desperation of those seeking to use APC platform
to realize their political ambition as the problem bedeviling the party. This
was his position when the Committee visited him earlier in the day at his
country home in Osun State from where members proceeded to Lagos.
Reporting him verbatim, the Director
of Press to the Committee Chairman said: “Chief Akande urged the Committee to
differentiate true party men from platform seekers for the party to grow. I
have great hope in what I have seen in the Committee. The party will certainly
bounce back stronger…”
Meanwhile, the Caretaker Committee
appeared to have vindicated the duo in their assertions that the party harbours
desperate election seekers, whose selfish interest portend dangerous threat to
stability of APC. The Committee Chairman, Mai Mala Buni, revealed this later
when he so described the defection of the Ondo State Deputy Governor, Agboola
Ajayi, to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as one example.
In his speech for the for
inauguration of the Ondo State APC Governorship Primary Screening Committee and
its Appeal level’s on Tuesday, July 7; Buni said: “In the last few months, our
party has been rocked by crises in several states, including Ondo State, where
the ‘former’ Deputy Governor defected to another party to bid for the
governorship ticket.
“We should all be aware that personal
ambition could often lead people to act unreasonably and in a manner skewed
towards personal, rather than collective, interest as in this case”
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