CONVENTION: APC To Adopt Unity List For Consensus Candidates, Says Political Appointees Won’t be allowed to Vote

CONVENTION: APC To Adopt Unity List For Consensus Candidates, Says Political Appointees Won’t be allowed to Vote

Posted by Onome Naomi

All is set for the All Progressives Congress, APC, to hold its national convention in Abuja after postponing it several times.

Chairman, Convention Sub-committee on Media and Publicity and Nasarawa State governor, Abdullahi Sule, in a briefing said political appointees will not be allowed to vote as delegates except where such appointees are “statutory delegates”.

A report by Vanguard said the party has agreed to go to the convention with a ‘Unity List’, outlining it’s consensus option for elective offices.

He said, “Before you go into the convention, our first choice is always consensus and we are still on that first choice. However, democracy demands, even our party constitution demands and the constitution of Nigeria demands that if that doesn’t work, we will go ahead and look at the other options. But right now, that remains our option number one.

“On the issue of political appointees, our delegates are actually statutory delegates. So if you have a former president as a political appointee, if you have a former senator as a political appointee, these are already automatic delegates, you know, so let us not confuse the two just because being an appointee doesn’t necessarily take you out of being a delegate, because our delegates are classified, clearly. The former president on our party platform, former elected this, elected that, party officials and the rest of that. I don’t think anybody who holds any political party office is actually right now a political appointee of the President, or the governors and the rest of that.

“So, most of the list that we submitted, you know, if you are talking of the ones we have submitted now, we don’t have commissioners, we don’t have advisers, we don’t have all those unless if somebody particularly was a former this or former that, in that case, you know, just being an appointee doesn’t completely exclude such a person, you know, from being a delegate.

“The issue of unity list will be ready today (Friday). It will actually be submitted and somebody was asking whether it is for real we are going to have a unity list or not, of course, yes, if you are talking of consensus, you must have a unity list, because that is the whole essence of consensus. You know, if you are having consensus, you are going to have people who have agreed, aspirants who have agreed, stakeholders who have agreed, and also the constituency that has agreed, and in that case, the name automatically will be adopted. And that is just the meaning of the unity list. That is how the unity list is going to be put together.

“On the arrangement for the consensus. I think anybody who has been following up with the activities of Mr President and the party will understand that so many things have been going on towards consensus. Mr President has met with the governors, met with the aspirants for the chairmanship, met with the National Assembly is meeting also with all the major stakeholders of this party and the rest of that. If you look at that, that is actually an arrangement towards a consensus.

“One thing I can tell you clearly, the leadership of this party, the stakeholders of this party, the governors are united.”