Tinubu blames Oshiomhole for APC crisis

The national leader of the troubled ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, on Saturday partly blamed former APC national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, for the conflicts ravaging the ruling party.

Tinubu in a statement on the resolutions at the APC National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting last Thursday acknowledged that party members were suing executive powers to overwhelm their opponent as the NWC was plunged into monumental crisis. The party, he noted, became a fight club, including plots for the removal of the national chairman; adding that mistakes were made, and Oshiomhole must admit his mistakes.

Tinubu had declared: “National Working Committee (NWC), itself, became riven by unnecessary conflict. Those who disagreed with one another stopped trying to find common ground.

“Attempts were made to use the power of executive authority to bury each other. I must be blunt here. This is the behaviour of a fight club not the culture of a progressive political party.

“Some members went against their chairman in a bid to forcefully oust him. In hindsight, his fence-mending attempts were perhaps too little too late.

“I believed and continue to believe that Comrade Oshiomhole tried his best. Mistakes were made and he must own them.”

Tinubu, however, reminded APC members of the good days of Oshiomhole as a strong campaigner during the 2019 general elections.

Tinubu lamented: “Yet, we must remember also that he was an able and enthusiastic campaigner during the 2019 election. He is a man of considerable ability as are the rest of you who constituted the NWC.

“It had been my hope that the disagreements could be resolved. After all, a political solution should not be beyond the ken of leaders of a major political party. But such resolution has failed to materialise. It was as if some unseen but strong force continued to stoke the embers. Instead of calling a prudent ceasefire, too many people sought more destructive weapons against one another.

“Order, party discipline and mutual respect went out of the window. Members instituted all manner of court cases, most of them destructive, some of them frivolous, none of them necessary. In the process, a dense fog fell upon our party.”

He, thereafter, solicited the cooperation of all APC members for the Edo and Ondo states governorship elections.