National Leader of the APC, Senator Bola Tinubu, yesterday in Abuja threw his weight behind Oshiomhole, expressing opposition to the moves to remove him from office.
Saying every member had the responsibility to respect the supremacy of the party, Tinubu, who highlighted various stages the party went through before the primaries as well as the agreements reached, said those who lost out in the primaries should accept their fate instead of resorting to undermining the party supremacy.
He said, “We all have to respect the party supremacy. You were all here when we had the congress. We elected the new executives. The convention, we had it. The NEC was formed and we surrendered to avoid conflict, to avoid domination, to avoid abuses of power.
“We surrendered our rights, all rights to the National Working Committee headed by Adams Oshiomhole that the National Working Committee should set up electoral bodies to supervise various state congresses and elections.
“We signed off for it. So, if it is not in our individual favour, so be it. We gave three options – consensus, where there is no consensus because if you are more than two or three and you cannot agree to one candidate, you go to the next level.
“The next level is the stakeholders’ delegate and you have to be supervised by the National Working Committee of the party, national election committee of the party. That shows party supremacy or the freest option. The less cumbersome is to open direct primary, line up and count the number, 1,2,3.
“If you win, you win and if you fail, go home. Then, appeal committee was set up to listen to all appeals – internal mechanism for conflict resolution. It was there. You cannot turn round against that. You cannot turn against all of that. No.
“Party is supreme. Party must be respected. Abuses will not do it and anger will not do it. It is party politics. Somebody will win and somebody will lose, too bad.”
He dismissed the current stay of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, in Dubai for the perfection of his campaign strategy, saying Nigeria won’t return to “the pit” the PDP led the country into for 16 years.
Tinubu who made these scathing remarks while answering questions from journalists after a meeting with Buhari in the State House, described PDP’s 16-year reign in the country as an illusion which he said Nigerians would never return to.
“We don’t fear, whether he’s in the jungle, or he’s in Dubai or in Abu Dhabi, people are free to meet and strategise in anyway they feel but we are not going back to the illusion of the PDP.
“It is not possible. Nigerians will not do that. They say slow and steady win the race. We inherited that from our forefathers and knowledgeable people. We can’t go back to the pit that we inherited for 16 years. They can strategise from anywhere but a leopard cannot change its skin,” he said.
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