The governor of Kebbi, Atiku Bagudu, earlier on Monday, led some governors elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari.
As speculated, the meeting which also had the Jigawa State governor, Abubakar Badaru, and Plateau State, Simon Lalong, revolved around the multiple challenges threatening to severe the party.
This was disclosed to journalists by Mr Bagudu shortly after the meeting which held at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, barely 24 hours after a separate meeting between Senate President Ahmad Lawan and Mr Buhari.
Almost at the same time that the president was in a meeting with the governors, scores of youth who identified themselves as members of party stormed the party’s secretariat to protest ask for the dissolution of the APC National Working Committee.
They faulted the body as being the cause of the problems ravaging the party.
This happened in the same premises where the South-south vice-chairman of the party, Hilliard Eta, led NWC members inaugurated Worgu Boms to replace Victor Giadom, as party’s acting Deputy National Secretary.
This was done in the absence of journalists.
Buhari/governors meeting
Commenting on the outcome of their meeting with Mr Buhari and the aforementioned incidents, the Kebbi governor who doubles as chairman of the Progressive Governors’ Forum (PGF), identified those events “as tenets of democratic system.”
He registered the forum’s readiness to comply by “all steps to unify and bring about peaceful resolution in our party”.
He also ascribed Mr Buhari’s ‘silence’ in face of the party crisis to the latter’s respect for ‘constitutionalism’ and ‘due process.’
“So, young people expressing their views by demonstrating, members of the party challenging court processes shows that the people are free to express their views. And dissent is not to be suppressed. What is important is that all will be taken on board in arriving at a conclusion that will be to the satisfaction of most party members and indeed Nigerians.
“At all times Mr. President has shown that he is a democrat, he is not running the party. Yes, he is the party leader, he allows party organs to do and decide what should be done.
“He is very hesitant to use his standing even as party leader, ‘talk less’ of his authority as Mr. President of the country to direct things, but at all times, he has been alive to the issue and like I said earlier, I believe with the encouragement he gave us this morning, with the level of details he has about all what is happening and the number of people he has listened to and heard,” Mr Bagudu told state house correspondents after the Monday meeting.
He also noted the possibility of the party calling a meeting of the party’s National Executive Council (NEC) “very soon if necessary to resolve the lingering issues within the party.”
