The national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Sen. Abdullahi Adamu has said presidential aspirants won’t leave the party after its primaries.
He disclosed this on Saturday when he met with some state governors where the party is having a crisis ahead of the 2023 general elections.
The Chief of Staff to the APC national chairman, Prof Abdullahi Yau, disclosed this at a webinar organised by APC Ward to Ward Ambassadors Diaspora Network on Saturday.
The webinar with the theme: “Democracy in Nigeria: Mobilising Global Support for progress and continuity” as its theme. Last week, a former governor of Kano state and a former House of Representatives member, Ibrahim Shekarau and Abdulmumin Jibrin defected to the New Nigeria Peoples Party.
Political observers believed that the defection may affect the chances of the APC retaining the state next year.
During the webinar, Yau said the national chairman was trying to reconcile aggrieved members who want to leave the party for one reason or the other.
He said: “I want to assure you that after the primaries none of the contestants or aspirants will leave the party. You can see that unlike the other parties where you see aspirants exchanging words, in our party, all the aspirants are calm, everybody is going left and right, trying to win votes for themselves.
“I assure you this is the most interesting party, the number of people that are contesting and they are going to give everybody the freedom to exercise your right as a Nigerian to contest and at the end of the exercise, just like what happened in the national convention, you will see that everybody will be satisfied with whoever that will emerge from the primaries.
“Unless you have a process that is not well coordinated, a process that is marred by malpractices that is when will be aggrieved and will want to leave the party but if you are given the opportunity to exercise your right and you go to the primaries and you think there is fairness in what we do in the primaries and you lose I don’t think you will have any reason to leave the party.
“I assure you even if we are going to have such a scenario where we will have aggrieved members after the primaries, the Chairman, NWC and the stakeholders in the party will ensure that they reconcile everybody after the primaries.’’
He said the party is in a period where it is preparing to hold primaries in all the states both for governorship, state assembly and for the presidential primary which is scheduled for Friday.
He continued: “As we all know, we have a lot of crises in the party. We have a lot of states where some people want to leave the party and this is what he (Adamu) is doing.
‘’We are trying as much as possible to see that our aggrieved members – a lot of people for instance in Kano, Kebbi, Benue, and other states where we have huge members and these are people with strong supporters. They are trying to leave the party for some reasons and the chairman on a daily basis is trying to reconcile these aggrieved members.
“This is one of the reasons why this morning (Saturday) he was mandated to meet with some governors. We didn’t sleep the whole night till this morning. He is meeting with some governors, aggrieved members and other stakeholders in the APC.’’
