By Umar Muhammad Puma
The All Progressives Congress (APC) has postponed its state congresses, scheduled for Wednesday April 23rd, to allow state governors under the aegis of the party, to attend the rescheduled expanded National Security Council meeting, fixed to discuss the security situation in the country that day.
In a statement issued yesterday by its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said the postponement (to Saturday, April 26th) is a confirmation of the party’s stated stand, to be part of all genuine efforts to end the insurgency in the country and its strong belief that bipartisanship must replace the crass partisanship of the Presidency and the ruling party if the security crisis is to be overcome.
APC reiterated its earlier warning to the Presidency and the PDP, not to politicize Nigeria’s security and to desist from seeking to profit from the current state of widespread insecurity in the country.The statement read, “Cunningly edging out the APC Governors from Thursday’s meeting of the expanded National Security Council is a bad strategy because, despite belonging to the opposition, our governors are not any less of stakeholders on the issue of our nation’s security than governors of the PDP or its satellite parties.
“As a matter of fact, three of the states, worst hit by the ongoing insurgency are being presided over by APC Governors, hence they are indispensable to any serious effort aimed at ending the security conundrum”, the party said.
It wondered what the Governors of the PDP, Labour Party and APGA could have discussed with the President at Thursday’s “surreptitious” meeting that they did not want APC governors to know about.
APC said, “Every trick in the book was employed to give APC Governors the impression that the meeting had been called off, only for those who believe they are the ‘real stakeholders’ to go ahead with the meeting, and then attempt to deceive Nigerians into believing that APC Governors shunned the meeting. Unfortunately for the deceivers, truth, as always, has prevailed and they have fallen on their own swords.”
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