APC National Convention: How we’ll achieve consensus option

The Governor of Nasarawa State, Abdullahi Sule, has offered an explanation on how the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) plans to attain a Unity list ahead of the March 26 National Convention.

Mr Sule, who is also the Chairman of Media and Publicity Committee for the event, said on Friday that President Muhammadu Buhari, late Wednesday night, directed that the new officials of the party should emerge by consensus.

With the event barely a few hours away, PREMIUM TIMES can report that the ruling party has not been able prevail on aspirants to endorse consensus candidates for some seats.

Sources close to some of the chairmanship aspirants told this newspaper that their candidates remain in the race.

Mr Sule said some geo-political zones have already agreed to the list put together by the party’s leadership and that efforts to attain the ultimate aim of achieving full consensus continues.

He said the party intends to achieve consensus candidates for all the positions through wide consultations with aspirants, stakeholders and their constituencies.

“If you want consensus, you must have a unity list. You must have people who have agreed, aspirants who have agreed, stakeholders who have agreed, constituencies that have agreed. That is the meaning of unity list, that is how we intend to achieve a unity list,” he explained.

The governor said if their aim for consensus failed to scale through, the APC will be forced to explore other options as stipulated by its constitution.

“As far as our party is concerned, we have all the three options in our constitution and the number one choice always in our party is consensus because it actually creates a rancour-free convention.

“The reason being, all the stakeholders from the various zones will sit and agree and all aspirants will also agree, sign off before we go into the convention.

“We are still on that first choice, even though democracy and our constitution of Nigeria demand that if that doesn’t work, then we go ahead and look at the other options. Right now, consensus remains our option number one,” he said.

Not all political appointees are barred from convention

Also offering clarity on the section of the recently signed Electoral Act (2022), Mr Sule argued that some delegates lists are automatic even if they are political appointees.

He said this while explaining the party’s decision to bar political appointees from voting at its national convention, as stipulated by Section 84 (12) of the law.

In compliance with this, the APC on Thursday night “declared that all political appointees who were elected as delegates to the National Convention slated for 26/3/2022 SHALL NOT VOTE in view of the controversy surrounding Section 84 (12) of the Electoral Act, 2022.”

it however said they can attend the convention as observers.

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The Senate had rejected Mr Buhari’s request to amend the controversial subsection in the Act to allow political appointees to contest and participate in the primaries without tending their resignation.

Last Friday, the Federal High Court sitting in Umuahia, Abia State, declared that section was inconsistent with the 1999 Constitution.

The judgement followed a suit filed by a lawyer and politician, Nduka Edede, in a suit number FHC/MU/SC/26/2022, with Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, as the only defendant.

While Mr Malami has agreed to implement the court’s judgement, the Senate has also registered its intention to appeal the judgement.

However, Mr Sule, in his explanation, said that not all political appointees are exempted from participating in the exercise.

“Our delegate lists are usually statutory if we have a former president as a political appointee, if you have a former senator as political appointees, those are automatic delegates. Let’s not confuse the two. Just because being an appointee does not necessarily take you out of being a delegate because delegates are classified clearly.

“I don’t think everyone holding political office are actually political appointees of the president, governors or senators appointees.

“Most of the list of delegates we have submitted, we don’t have commissioners, we don’t have advisers, we don’t have all those unless if somebody was a former this or former that. In that case, just being an appointee does not completely exclude such a person from being a delegate,” he said.