Hours to the commencement of the National Convention of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa State has revealed that the party will adopt other options should the consensus arrangement for the chairmanship position fail to materialise.
The Governor, while addressing a press conference at the APC National Secretariat, Abuja on Friday said the party remains keen on having a consensus candidate.
According to him, all the stakeholders in the party are united and are working on a “unity list” which would be ready between Friday and Saturday.
He explained that the unity list will contain the consensual candidate of the APC.
He also added that appointees of the President who held key positions in the past and are qualified to become statutory delegates would be allowed to play their role as delegates at the convention.
In his words: “One thing I can tell you clearly, the leadership of this party, the stakeholders of this party, the governors are united.”
“Our first choice is always consensus. And we are still on that first choice. However, democracy demands, even our (APC) Constitution demands and the constitution of Nigeria demands that if that doesn’t work, we will go ahead and look at the other options. But right now, that remains our option.
“On the issue of political appointees of Mr. President, Some of them are actually statutory delegates. So if you have a former president as a political appointee, if you have a former senator as a political appointee, these are already automatic delegates. So let’s not confuse the two, because being an appointee doesn’t necessarily take you out of being a delegate, because our delegates are classified, clearly.
“Former president of our party, former elected this, elected that, party officials and the rest of that. I don’t think anybody who holds any political party office is actually right now a political appointee of the President, or the governors and the rest of that.
“We have had on the various regions, you know, that unity list will be ready today, you know, it will actually be submitted and somebody was asking whether it is for real. Of course, yes, we are going to have a unity list. If you are talking of consensus, you must have unity list, because that is the whole essence of consensus.
“You know, if you are having consensus, you are going to have people who have agreed; aspirants who have agreed, stakeholders who have agreed, and also the constituency that have agreed, and in that case, that name automatically will be adopted. And that’s just the meaning of the unity list. That is how unity list is going to be put together.”
