Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), in this interview with TEMIDAYO AKINSUYI in Abuja, spoke on issues affecting the ruling party, the forthcoming national convention and other issues. Excerpts:

From May 14, your party again shifted its national convention from June 2 to June 23. Many people say it is because you are afraid that there may be an implosion at the convention owing to the multiple crises that trailed the congresses, and that you have mandated the Asiwaju Bola Tinubu reconciliation team to pacify the aggrieved members before the date.. How true is that?

That is not exactly correct. As a matter of fact, there was no time we said we are going to do our convention on June 2nd. It was just a proposed date and you cannot point at a single statement that the party issued through me that says that our convention will hold on June 2.The moment we constituted the Convention Committee, it was important for us to reconcile with them the date that will be suitable for this exercise. Some people proposed June 2nd, but there were also so many other people who felt it will not be politically sensitive for us to hold a convention during Ramadan.But there were contending argument that there was nothing in Islam that says we could not do convention during Ramadan.

So, we were going back and forth with this argument until the Convention committee came back to say even in terms of logistics, we may not be ready by that June 2nd and that many of our members are traveling for Umrah (lesser Hajj). So, we feel it is best we fix a date after Ramadan and that was when the party now decided that June 23rd will be an appropriate date.
So, it had nothing to do with any issue being put forward about whether crisis will occur at the convention or not. It is just a matter of looking for a convenient date for everyone.
Based on the outcome of the congresses, are you confident that there won’t be an implosion in your party as a result of this convention?
We are confident that there won’t be any implosion not just because of the work we are going to do between now and then to resolve the contentions around the congresses. There are some that are straightforward while some are a bit complicated. But the golden rule for us is this: wherever there had been congresses, did they comply with the guidelines that were handed to the committee sent to the states to conduct the congresses? As a matter of fact, were these congresses conducted by the committee sent to the state to do so? These were the questions we have been asking. Also, wherever there are aggrieved members who felt that they were shortchanged or certain things were not done properly, we have appeal committees sent to the respective states who have also submitted their reports. As from Wednesday 30th of May, the National Working Committee which is like the Supreme Court in this instance will be sitting to consider those cases coming from the states. Paramount in our consideration is to ensure that justice is done to everyone based on available evidence to us. I believe that even those who will not be satisfied in the end should be able to see that justice is done. If everybody is able to see that justice is done, even if they are not happy they will be able to live with it. It is therefore incumbent on us in the NWC to ensure that justice is done to everyone based on the evidence available before us. That is not just the report of the congress committee, not just the report of the appeal committee but also other report s that will be made available through other channels to the NWC. But I can assure you that this NWC will ensure that justice is done to every member because we want peace in our party and we know that fundamental precondition for peace everywhere is justice. That is one side of it but there are also other conversations going on at other levels. There are other issues that are coming up by other members of the party who are saying they are not happy with the way things are going and there are other levels of engagement that are going on. So, we believe that some of these issues will be better handled in order to ensure that we don’t have what we call an explosion by June 23 when we meet for the convention.

Can we say this is what is happening with the PDP faction in APC today?

The issue of new PDP is quite different from what we witnessed during the congresses. I can say this without fear of contradiction; of course you know my relationship with the new PDP. I am from the PDP extraction and so, I am involved in a way .
I think the issue is that most of us who came from the PDP there is a sense that we feel that we have not been adequately compensated within the entire political arrangement. I think that is the general feeling within the nPDP .
The truth is that majority of nPDP people within the APC want a better relationship. If we are coming to say let’s look at this issue, we are saying that we want this union to be stronger. Some people are saying that nPDP want to go away. No, I don’t have that feeling .
I think for nPDP members to have called for dialogue with the party leadership, they are actually interested in the relationship. If they are not interested, they won’t bring anything forward, they will just spring a surprise at everybody.


Read more https://independent.ng/were-working-to-ensure-crisis-free-national-convention-abdullahi/

Mallam Abdullahi and his boss Saraki came in from pdp so they are members of nPdp.