By Abdullahi Mohammed
The All Progressives Congress, APC Publicity Secretary ,Mallam Lai Mohammed said neither Bola Tinubu nor Bisi Akande are members of the EXCOS of the party. He disclosed this on the 3rd of July 2015 while briefing the press at the party secretariat Abuja after the NEC meeting on the outcome of the closed door meeting.
He was responding to questions following the absence of the party’s national leader Tinubu and former interim national chairman Akande at the NEC meeting .
According to the party’s spokesman “If you look at our constitution neither of them are members of the Excos of the party. I think it is at the discretion of NWC or NEC who to invite or not”.
The APC spokesman also dispelled allegations that President Muhammadu Buhari was moving at a slow pace .Mohammed ” I think it is there repeatedly that this is just a perception because if you look at the circumstances of this government it is not like what happened in let’s say 2003,2007, or 2011.This is the first time that, really that there has been a transition where it is not one president being re elected or one person passing the baton to another candidate of his own party .
According to Mohammed ,”This is for the first time in the history of Nigeria where the opposition has defeated the ruling party and it comes also with a lot of implications. And secondly is the fact that when we were coming in at this time as opposition we need to know the depth of the challenges you are facing .
“This is what the party especially the president elected in particular realized when he set up a transitional committee. The idea of transition committee is to allow interaction between the out going and incoming government and to give us the opportunity exactly to know what is the state of the economy, but persistently we saw the cooperation of the last government but it was only in the 25th of May that we were given hand over note about eighteen thousands pages of them and we moved to extend the life of transition committee for another four weeks actually because initially we were supposed to bring in our report by the end of the 2nd week of May.(But they ) actually handed over on the 12th of June about four weeks extension .Now to hande over note of about 800 pages documents to Mr president which he needs to study and there were far reaching recommendation in the report including merger of ministries and other agencies. I think Mr president is just trying to be very thorough and painstaking , studying this particular report. Part of it would guide the nominations of ministerial list” he explained.
” I don’t think Mr president is unaware that there are concerns outside there and I am sure that we will in the next couple of weeks, I will say next few weeks …I can assure that very soon we are going to see rash of appointments….But like I said earlier on somewhere else there is a motion and movement in this party” he stated.
He said further that ” the president took a particular step which I feel is not being appreciated by most people I think section 8 of the constitution which says that every single money accruing to the federal government should be paid into a federation account now by calling the federal inland revenue service, the Nigeria port authority, customs services, the NNPC and ordering all of them to close other illegal accounts. I think that is the beginning of probity in this administration .
