APC Group Urges Party Leadership to Cancel State Congress in Lagos

Segun James

The national caretaker committee of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has been urged to cancel the last state Congress in Lagos, saying the election was fraught with illegally.

A group, Lagos APC Collectives, led by Mr. Fouad Oki, insisted that the exercise had not been held in line with Nigeria’s constitution and that of APC as well as the party’s guidelines for state Congress.

Oki, at a press conference in Ikeja, faulted the Congress that produced Pastor Cornelius Ojelabi-led executive committee on grounds that proper accreditation was not carried out as “there were ineligible persons that were accredited into the venue.”

He said it was ultra vires for the party headquarters in Abuja to accept or recognise results by the Dr. Adebayo Adelabu led- Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC) on the Lagos exercise.

Giving a summary of his presentation before the State Congress Appeal Committee headed by Hajia Fatima Zahra Umar, which sat on Wednesday at the party secretariat on Acme Road, Ogba, he faulted the conduct of the exercise on the ground that it violated earlier court judgment of October 7, 2021, which upheld that Lagos consisted only 20 Local Government Areas and not 57LCDAs, describing such as part of the impunity that had thrived in the statechapter of the party.

He said he was denied entry into the Onikan Stadium and, therefore, denied participation in the State Congress, and further recalled that the Adelabu-led CECPC was in the state three days ahead of the exercise and many of the party stakeholders never knew the venue, where the exercise would hold as they were not briefed.

“In view of the above, we call on the party leadership to jettison the result of the said purported State Congress and cancel same as having not been conducted in accordance with the provisions of Section 3(2), (6) and part 1 of the First Schedule to the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as altered); Section 156 of the Electoral Act, 2020 (as amended); and Article 33 (i) of the All Progressives Congress Constitution, 2014 (as amended) and the All Progressives Congress Guidelines for the State Congresses,” he said.

On the issue of consensus candidates, Oki insisted that his group had maintained its opposition to such arrangement as well as other key stakeholders in the state.

“It is instructive to further state that, a recurring issue of consensus arrangement has permeated the political space in Lagos State. We have always maintained our position against it, largely, because of the way it was proposed,” he said.