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APC okays Edo chapter chair’s suspension, mulls reconciliation as group seeks Buhari’s intervention

By Adamu Abuh (Abuja), Anietie Akpan (Calabar) and Michael Egbejule (Benin City)
15 November 2019   |   2:09 am
The All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday deplored the crisis rocking the Edo chapter even as it endorsed the suspension of the state party chairman, Anslem Ojezua, by 11of the 16 members of the State Working Committee (SWC).

• Eta declares ‘sanctions’ against Oshiomhole, Obaseki, others void

The All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday deplored the crisis rocking the Edo chapter even as it endorsed the suspension of the state party chairman, Anslem Ojezua, by 11of the 16 members of the State Working Committee (SWC).

In a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Malam Lanre Issa -Onilu, APC regretted that the impasse has festered amid reconciliatory efforts of party stalwarts and leaders, including the Chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF), Dr. Kayode Fayemi, and Chairman of the Progressive Governors’ Forum (PGF), Alhaji Abubakar Bagudu. Pledging to return normalcy to the chapter, the party stated that it was constituting a fact-finding and reconciliation committee to meet with the feuding gladiators for an amicable resolution.

On Ojezua’s suspension, the national leadership of the political group stated: “We have reviewed the process they followed and concluded that they have fulfilled the required conditions.“We therefore uphold the suspension of the Edo State APC Chairman, Anslem Ojezua, while we await the outcome of the fact-finding and reconciliation committee.”

Besides, the Vice Chairman, South South of the APC, Ntufam Hilliard Eta, has declared the purported suspension of Governor Godwin Obaseki and the party’s National Chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, and others as null and void.Briefing newsmen yesterday in Calabar, he asserted: “You may want to know that apart from the National Executive Committee (NEC), the zonal executive committee sees to this kind of issue. We intend to convene an emergency zonal executive committee meeting to look into the whole matter.

“Having said so, I am not in a position to take sides in the Edo debacle. But let me say that I have read and seen in the newspapers and the television as well as on the social media the various sanctions and suspensions starting from the national chairman, who was said to have been suspended down to the governor, his deputy, the secretary to the state government, the party chairman in the state and even the state secretary of the party.

“My take is that none of those processes lived to the expectations of the constitution of the party. So as for me as an individual, the suspensions are all null and void.” Also yesterday, a group, The Reformed Oghomwan Mandate, urged President Muhammadu Buhari to urgently intervene in the crisis.

In a distress letter signed by the Director of Strategy, George Osagie Osaghae, the group said the call became necessary “to preserve the fragile peace in Edo and save the polity from degenerating into a foreseeable collapse.”

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