TheCable

The All Progressives Party (APC) is no longer a part of strange fellows, its interim national chairman, Chief Bisi Akande, said on Wednesday.

Speaking during the inauguration of members of the party’s new national executive committee, Akande described the event as “epoch-making”, considering the challenges that assailed the party from the outset.

“That this day has come at all is major achievement, because the anti-democratic forces did not give the APC a chance to survive,” he said.

“In fact, they did not believe that the new child called the APC would be born at all. They wobbled in the belief that Nigeria is a one-party state, using PDP as a decoy of the one party by rigging elections since 2003.

“When the leaders of our various parties came together to consummate the first merger in the history of our dear country, the enemies of progress jeered at us, deriding us as strange bed fellows who could not work together. Today, we are no longer a party of strange bedfellows. We are a truly pan-Nigerian political party that is giving our people hope.”

In his remarks, the new national chairman, Mr. John Oyegun, accused the PDP of plotting to rig the Ekiti gubernatorial election and warned the president not to encourage acts capable of truncating the country’s democracy.

“The events that are happening in Ekiti State point to the clear fact that the PDP is bent on rigging the election. And the writing of results of the Saturday election in Ekiti even before declaring polls open, if this dangerous trend is not arrested, Mr President, the consequences will be dire for democracy and for our nation,” he said.

“The APC will not accept the outcome of an election in Ekiti unless the authorities provide convincing explanations to the series of questionable developments that have been occurring over the length and breadth of Ekiti in recent times.”

The inauguration was marred a group of thugs who followed the national youth leader, Ibrahim Dasuki Jalo, into the arena, disrupting the proceedings for about 30 minutes before security operatives stepped in to restore calm.

The thugs loyal to Jalo were protesting against alleged substitution of the youth leader with another member of the party from Bauchi. Among them were physically-challenged persons on wheels.

Jalo’s emergence as youth leader has been the subject of media spotlighting. While the Peoples Democratic Party argues that he is 52, given the fact that he was 49 when he contested the Gombe/Kwame/ Funakaye federal constituency seat in the House of Representatives in 2011, his party, the APC, maintains that he is only 43.