Why APC Must Postpone February Convention – Adamu Garba II

A Chieftain of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Adamu Garba II, has implored the leadership of the party to postpone the party convention scheduled to hold on February 26, 2022, to a more convenient date pending when the various warring factions within the party resolve their differences.

The 2019 presidential aspirant of the party made these remarks recently while speaking in an interview with foremost Television Station, AIT.

According to him, “Our party the APC, will be going into the convention on February 26 as decided by the National Working Committee (NWC), but we are only going into that convention as a divided party.”

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Adamu noted that, currently, the APC has 14 states with different factions contending the leadership stand of the state executive of the party.

“Imagine if these 14 states delegates and executive members come to the convention ground, you have like Delta State excos One and Delta State excos two, Kano State excos one and Kano State excos two, is that what we are going to have on the stand?

“That implies, that there is a very serious level of selfishness, from the elites of the party, across board if we can’t agree consensually on something that is very sacrosanct and expedient for the development of the country, but we pay more attention to what we should get into our pockets.

“Like now, as a party, if we get into the convention ground by February 26th, with the kind of challenges that we faced with now, we might likely face implosion.”

Adamu added that, should the party be faced with an implosion, it will be relinquishing political power back to the People’s Democratic Power (PDP), an opportunity which APC exploited from them in 2014.

“That is why one of our APC party member, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu requested that the party should postpone the convention, perhaps may be till a later date.

“Very fantastic opinion, though then we condemned it. But frankly speaking, I don’t think that as we are now, we are even ready to go into this convention ground as a divided home, simply because we have different factions in the party in different states and we don’t know what might be the outcomes of these convention, come February 26.”

He said going ahead with the elections might spell very big doom to the party, which might be tantamount to destroying the legacies of the President Buhari and causing a lot of problems, which might also transcend across every parts of our national life including governance. Also, there are insinuations that some elites of the party, are already seeing the storm coming from us, they know that we do not agree on everything with them, because we want to know what is the stake of the future generation within the party.

They are pushing to do the convention in a hurry, so there can be implosion, may be to set up another taskforce or may be to go to PDP or any other opposition party and we lose out. We do not want this kind of things to happen, that’s why we are asking for transitionary leadership.

Adamu further noted that holding on to political power is not development and bringing about security of lives and properties.

“the critical questions we need to be asking is what is been done to address the situations and why is northern region of Nigeria facing under development challenges, and the answer is not because the people are lazy, not because the people are not thoughtful, it’s not because our people cannot do something, it’s simply because our people have no access to proper markets. That’s what is happening, and the biggest challenge is, you find something in Zamfara, before you carry that thing to a market in Lagos, it will cost you a whole of money.

It is cheaper for me to import fruits and vegetables from South Africa to our 5 star hotels and restaurants here in Nigeria, than to take it from Jos, plateau state or Benue State. Meanwhile they are part of Nigeria. …. Because, we have infrastructure deficit, so carrying these things to take it up to Lagos or to the city centers is a problem.

So what we need to do is to attack the infrastructure properly by investing heavily in infrastructure and bring down inflation. That is what policy makers needs to look into, but as long we keep riding it as a rhetoric, to be able to win political power, we will have problems.

So what we need to do is to attack the infrastructure properly by investing heavily in infrastructure and bring down inflation. That is what policy makers needs to look into, but as long we keep riding it as a rhetoric, to be able to win political power, we will have problems.

“I recently visited Kebbi State, the governor there, His Excellency Atiku Bagudu did not just focus on building mighty bridges and roads, he focused on building what is called human infrastructures, building structures and systems that empower people from their location. I believe, things like this, brings about heavy developments in the country.

On what is the current APC led administration planning to leave as a legacy before their tenure is over he said: ”we are looking and addressing this subject, as a key leadership challenge, that is why we are advocating for a complete transformation and even transitionary leadership in the whole of north, if possible the whole of Nigeria. Since we have leaders that their thinking does not go beyond myself and my family. And this has now become a very serious problem, Nigerian lives are daily threatened; you can’t ply our roads again, you can’t go to farm.

People are getting desperate. Go to city centers, you will see, so many people are leaving their villages and coming to the cities and this is a very serious problem. I was also listening to one of the guest on the show talking about women empowerment. In the northern Nigeria, the main thing that pulled us out of poverty during the early twentieth century was the hard work of women.

“Almost all the women out there, they have one small business or the other. Even as at today, as am talking to you, almost sixty percent (60%) of poor family households in Northern Nigeria are supported by women economically. But why are they not properly empowered? because policy makers are only thinking of building a house in Abuja and Dubai and not caring about what is happening down there. And that is why it is very important for us to have a change in leadership.

Asked if he is aware that there are insinuations that there is this grand conspiracy by northern elites to subjugate some people not to grow, Adamu responded: “to be very candid with you, this have a lot of iota of truth, because I don’t see any reason whereby I, as an individual that understands the value of education and quality healthcare and can take my wife and kids to the best schools and medical facility. Now, imagine having a very huge government budget and I refuse to provide such amenities to our people.

So, the conspiracy is both sides, you have the elite conspiracy and we have also the people conspiracy, all boils down to illiteracy or lack of understanding of my own right as a citizen and what I should demand from the people I voted for”.