Voice of Nigeria (VON) Director-General Mr. Osita Okechukwu has hailed Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu’s appointment as chairman of the party’s reconciliation committee.
A group, Harmony Progressive Forum (HPF), and APC chieftain Timi Frank also lauded the establishment of the committee.
Okechukwu told reporters in Enugu at the sideline of a meeting of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Anchor Borrowers, Rice Agricultural Programme that the appointment of Tinubu by President Muhammadu Buhari to head the committee was timely and a milestone.
He maintained that only a person of Tinubu’s calibre could reconcile the intra-party feuds in APC, noting that Tinubu provided the critical supplement for APC’s victory in 2015.
“It is a milestone. I salute Mr. President for appointing our national leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to head such a crucial committee. It is timely and a welcome development. He was one of the core architects of the merger, which gave birth to the APC and has the Midas touch to stitch the torn parts. Let’s be honest, there are intra-disputes, which need a man of Asiwaju’s calibere to fix.”
Asked to name such crisis, Okechukwu said: “It is not crisis per se, but intra-feuds, which normally occur in every human association. Some of them are ego-based, some are ancient grudges and some are frictions, which could be traced to the fact that APC is a polygamous household with many mothers and one father.”
On whether he was aware of the insinuations in the media that Tinubu’s invitation is being resisted by his supporters, who felt that the he was sidelined, he said: “I don’t want to comment on speculation, all I know is that our brothers in the Southwest appreciate the critical foundation President Muhammadu Buhari is laying nationwide in infrastructural development. And our national leader is aware that what is paramount is to save Nigeria from those who for 16 years of unprecedented oil boom, squandered our commonwealth.
VON DG expressed optimism that Tinubu would mend fences with APC National Chairman John Odigie-Oyegun.
“Oyegun belongs to his motherhood of APC and did his utmost best in the circumstance he found himself.
“My happiness is that Asiwaju as a veteran stands on a good stead to reconcile the feuding parties and different tendencies, more so, when Mr. President has mandated him to select his team” he said.
HPF, which is a coalition of ex-Congress for Progressives Change (CPC) local government chairmen of the Kwara State All Progressives Congress (APC), cautioned the Tinubu-led committee to be wary of individuals that might be out to derail its activities for personal and selfish reasons.
Addressing reporters yesterday in Ilorin, HPF Chairman Alhaji Musa Umar said: “We appreciate the setting up of a reconciliation committee to settle amicably identified rifts among members of APC in the country. The choice of Tinubu as the team leader is highly commendable in view of his track record of managing political issues.
“The outcome of the committee’s assignment should, therefore, be guided only by its objectives and verifiable submissions and not allow sentiments and primordial issues to becloud their work. Kwara must change for better and the time to act is now.”
Frank, in a statement in Abuja yesterday, called for support for the Tinubu-led reconciliation committee.
He said the committee has a very big task ahead of it and cannot perform any magic as it was almost too late to reconcile members.
Saying the committee should have been set up about one year ago, Frank, who is one of the aggrieved APC members, said nobody took him serious when he raised an alarm that all was not well with the party.
He added that if the Tinubu-led committee was set up earlier, many members of the party who left would not.
