Daily Independent (Lagos)
Rafiu Ajakaye
28 November 2008
Lagos — All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) this week said it is not budged by a request that it should withdraw from the government of national unity (GNU) as a condition to bring back its aggrieved members.
ANPP Spokesman, Emma Eneukwu, said in a telephone interview on Thursday that the Bashir Tofa Reconciliatory Committee's demand that the party withdraw from the GNU amounts to "mere suggestion" which is not binding on the party, except ratified by its National Executive Council (NEC) or the National Convention.
"The Tofa committee was only offering a suggestion. We went into GNU on the directive of the ANPP NEC which is the highest decision making body of the party after the National Convention. And whatever the Tofa committee has said will first and foremost be taken to NEC, which will then decide whether the party should withdraw or not. So, it is entirely an advice," Eneukwu said.
"Besides that, the Tofa Committee was only trying to report the feelings of people it met in the course of its reconciliation meeting."
The Tofa Committee had earlier in the week said the party has no business partaking in the coalition government of President Umaru Yar'Adua, formed to counter the rising criticisms of the April 2007 general elections adjudged to be the worst in the country's history.
Until dissolved recently, ANPP had two slots in the Federal Cabinet: Minister of State for Information, Ibrahim Nakade; and Women Affairs Minister, Aishatu Bugundu. Some of its members also serve as special assistants to Yar'Adua. Nakade and Bugundu were dropped during the reshuffle, triggering speculations that the GNU may have broken down.
Eneukwu said the party is still serving in the GNU, and has submitted another two ministerial nominees to replace the lost slots.
He added: "On the ministerial appointment, President Umaru Yar'Adua informed us before he dropped our two ministers, and we have since sent in replacements, and I am sure the President will soon send those names to the National Assembly, if he has not done that already. So, I can confirm to you that we are still very much in the GNU, regardless of the advice by the Tofa Committee."
ANPP Presidential candidate in the 2007 election, Muhammadu Buhari, has since parted ways with the party's executive led by Edwin Ume-Ezeoke, which the former accused of sabotaging his suit challenging the election of Yar'Adua and of participating in a government formed after a poll the party had denounced as widely flawed and challenged in court. The suit is still pending at the Supreme Court.
The Buhari Organisation (TBO) could not be reached for this report, as the group's Director General, Sule Hamman's telephone was not available as at press time.
The Tofa Committee was set up to bring aggrieved members, including Buhari, back to the party fold.
The reconciliation process in the ANPP took a new twist in September when Ume-Ezeoke served quit notice on Buhari-although the party boss said the party would neither suspend nor expel Buhari.
Ume-Ezeoke had told journalists during a solidarity visit to the National Chairman of the Progressive People's Alliance (PPA), Clement Ebri, at the party's new national secretariat in Abuja that the Tofa Committee wrote Buhari to request for a meeting, but that the former military head of state snubbed it.
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