Minister of special duties and inter Governmental affairs, His Excellency, George Akume who also contested the chairmanship position of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), has said that he has willingly donated his 20 Million nomination fee meant for the purchase of interest and Nomination forms to the party, task others to emulate the gesture.
Recall that President Muhammadu Buhari directed the leadership of the APC to refund the money paid for nomination forms by aspirants that have been compelled to drop out from the party’s national chairmanship race.
Akume while answering filling questions from newsmen during a solidarity visit to the APC national chairman said the issue of money does not arise.
“According to him, I had willingly donated my own to the party and I believe others would do the same thing. We have this basic understanding, we have to support the present leadership of the party to succeed. That is what is important so that we will continue with the good work that Mr president is doing.
“Basically we are here on solidarity visit, we come to congratulate the chairman for being elevated to the exalted position of chairman of the greatest party in Africa.
“This is a party that have membership of over 42 million Nigerians. Clearly legitimise by the photograph that we have on each form and I can say at a point that our junior partners have tried to do what we did so successfully.
“The revalidation excercise, they tried twice and they fail twice. So we are very proud of this record that we are the biggest political party in West Africa.
Speaking on the internal crisis in Benue state, he said, a big political party like the APC even at the state level is expected to have a little irritations here and there but these irritations are not sufficiently strong to break the organic unity of the party in Benue state.
“We want to assure Nigerians particularly the APC and indeed the national chairman that the little irritation in Benue state are going to be squarely address for the benefit of our party and for the benefit of our teaming supporters who look onto the APC as the only hope of the common man in Benue state and even at the national level.
“So we are very confident that APC Benue will come on stronger than you can never imagine. We are doing very well, we have registered so much, so many members. We have registered those who are ready to vote and therefore, Benue is ready to go.
The former governor while speaking further on issue of directives by President Muhammadu Buhari on consensus candidate clarify that the president did not give directives rather he appealed to all Aspirants to accept Adamu as the chairman of the party.
“The issue of directives did not occur whatsoever in our dinner with Mr president.
” We ate the dinner with him and he appealed to us to build the consensus as much as we could and that was basically what we did. It was not a directive and you know who the president is; a democratic to the core.
“I know and I recall what happened in the past when I was the governor; there was a war of difference between the way Mr president operates and the way we saw between 1999 and 2007,” Akume said.
