The All Progressives Congress (APC) says the exit of Tom Ikimi and others like him was what the party had prayed and fasted for.
The spokesman for the opposition party, Mr Lai Mohammed, said on Sunday that every member of the party was celebrating their exit.
“I don’t know why there is so much noise about his exit,” Mr Mohammed said, describing as “absolute bunkum”claims that Mr Ikimi had played a vital role in the merger of the political parties that formed the APC.
Mr Lia Mohammed insisted that Mr Ikimi was not a power block in the party and that his reasons for leaving the APC were baseless.
He said that the issue Mr Ikimi raised concerning how the chairman of the party, Mr John Oyegun, emerged was not correct, insisting that Mr Oyegun emerged because he was smarter.
Mr Ikimi, who was made the Coordinating Chairman of the Merger Talks before the merger of the parties, resigned his membership of the party giving a detail statement on reasons he left the party.
The letter reads in part: “I would rather trust the informed whispers in the inner circles of the APC which have it that having positioned himself as perceived leader in the most lucrative income sources of the party, he is recipient and dispenser of bags and bags of party funds. I am also aware that he is, too, a beneficiary of most of the lucrative contracts in all the states controlled by the defunct ACN, without exception. To further bolster his image, it was also frequently said that Tinubu has control of all the votes from South Western Nigeria which, as has been currently touted, when added to the votes of North Western Nigeria would guarantee victory for the APC in the upcoming presidential election.
“This reckless and arrogant self-aggrandizement paved the way for the imposition of a strange leadership on the APC in July 2013 when the party obtained registration from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Those of us who had worked so hard towards the successful merger and creation of the APC were manipulated out of the scheme of things. In the bizarre struggle to seize control of the party, we were even openly accused by the self-proclaimed owners of the party, of wanting to steal ‘their’ party. Many of us in the party as well as keen observers outside frowned at the skewed leadership image of the party that was being paraded.
“An image that blatantly ignored national sensitivities. The draft constitution prepared by the Merger Committee included an exit clause, which provides a time limit of six months for the Interim Management of the Party. That clause mysteriously disappeared from the version of the constitution that was smuggled into INEC records. Chief Bisi Akande’s national chairmanship was therefore primed to stay on in power ad infinitum! Tinubu frantically constituted a group of friends and cronies which he proclaimed to be the APC leadership. The press, led by The Nation newspaper, was made to propagate the aberration. And so, rather than allow the construction of a sound base for the party, conducive to free admission of members nationwide, these self proclaimed leaders embarked on a national travel spree all in a blaze of publicity, criss-crossing the country in private aircraft, visiting PDP state governors to offer them the state branches of the APC if they would join the party.
“While they obviously, but ridiculously, assumed that the crisis then in the PDP would last forever, the details of the agreements they reached with PDP break-away governors were never revealed to the authentic party leadership but they were such that they ignited the explosion of irreconcilable crisis in some states, particularly Kano, Sokoto and Adamawa, resulting in the instant loss of some valuable key members.
” Major decisions said to be party decisions now started emerging from this select group whose ad hoc membership varied from time to time. They usually congregated at Tinubu’s private parlour in his Asokoro, Abuja residence. Those who wanted to belong had to find or force their way into that parlour. Once initiated, your independence or capacity to challenge the plots that emerged from that cult venue became seriously curtailed. Rather than freely open up critical issues to free debate at the Interim Executive Council for democratic decisions to emerge, positions plotted at the notorious Asokoro parlour were being desperately foisted on the party for execution.”
On claims of imposition of candidates on members of the party, Mr Mohammed said that the party had never imposed any candidate on the party members.
Mr Lia Mohammed, further stated that Mr Ikimi’s claims were not true and that his exit would not have any negative impact on the party, as the party had prayed for the exit of Mr Ikimi and his likes.
