The All Progressives Congress, APC, has explained why Minster of
Women Affairs, Hajia Jumai Alhassan and her Ministry of Communications
counterpart, Adebayo Shittu, were disqualified from contesting the
governorship primary election of the party.
While Alhassan was eyeing the party’s governorship sole ticket in
Taraba State, Shittu battling for the APC governorship flag in Oyo.
They were both told they can’t contest on the platform of the APC, yesterday for different reasons.
National Chairman of the party, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole gave the reasons at a news conference Friday in Abuja.
He said, “He (Shittu) admitted that he did not do the mandatory NYSC
as provided for under the law and in his own judgment, his being a
member of the House of Assembly in the state and now as a Minister of
the Federal Republic, that these were enough sacrifices. But for us as a
party we know that NYSC is a mandatory scheme.
“It is not something you may elect to do or abstain from doing and my
understanding of the NYSC Act is that no employer of labour is
permitted to employ anyone who graduated under 30 years and who did not
obtain an exemption for reasons as provided for in the NYSC Act.
“So, for us, not participating in the NYSC raises very serious moral issue as well as legal issue.
“After interviewing him, we were convinced that….for our party, there
are clear lessons we need to learn from our recent past when
people…anyway, we were convinced that if he did not do NYSC, that for
us, was enough to disqualify him and we had to find the courage to do
so.
“As for the Honourable Minister of Women Affairs, she has issues that
have to do with party loyalty. Our constitution is clear and it
dictates that to contest elections or even hold office in the APC, you
must be loyal to the party in every material concern.
“From all she had said in the past and even her comments and general
attitude during the screening, the NWC reviewed everything taken
together and we arrived at the conclusion that she does not possess the
level of loyalty that the APC requires for her to contest elections on
our platform.
“We made it clear when the defections happened that APC may well
benefit from these defections if it helps us to be more critical in
terms of whom we give platform to contest elections and that there are
core values that binds the APC together and they are non-negotiable.
“The Electoral Act and the APC Constitution forbids anyone from being a member of more than one political party at a time.
“You cannot be a member of APC and be a card-carrying member of
another party but when you have a situation where it would appear, based
on what you know and based on what I know that someone is probably APC
in the daytime maybe for the purpose of retaining certain offices and
they are PDP at heart or if they are not PDP at heart, they are actually
and simply a follower of a one-man permanent presidential
candidate…then we have the right to ask ourselves if these attitudes and
qualities are characteristics of an ideal member of an APC. So, those
are the reasons.
“We did not want to have a lengthy explanation to do but she knows
why she was disqualified and we know why we denied her the use of our
platform”, he said.