Tinubu speaks on alleged rift with Buhari, APC caretaker committee

The national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Bola Tinubu on Saturday showed support for the formation of an caretaker committee for the party as recommended by Nigeria President Muhammadu Buhari.

“The President [Muhammadu Buhari] has spoken and his decision has been accepted. It is now beholden on all of us, as members of the APC, to recommit ourselves to the ideals and principles on which our party was founded,” Tinubu said in a statement.

“President Muhammadu Buhari is much more than a mere beneficiary of the [APC] party.”

Tinubu’s statement was in reaction to claims that he had been marginalised by the leadership of the APC after it dissolved its national working committee on Thursday.

The APC dissolved its national working committee based on the recommendations of Buhari whom political critics said allegedly plotted cutting down on Tinubu’s influence in the party.

Buhari also called for the immediate suspension of all pending litigations involving the party and its members, as well as the ratification of the party’s governorship primary election recently conducted in Edo State.

Consequently, Yobe State Governor, Mai Mala Buni, was appointed as the chairman of the new caretaker committee of the APC.

Refuting the claims on his relationship with the president and affairs of the party, Tinubu said Buhari was right to decide what he deemed good to reposition the APC to the values of its formation.

“He (Buhari) is one of its founding fathers. The APC does not exist in its current form without his singular contributions. That is not opinion, it is undisputed fact,” Tinubu said.

The former Lagos State governor said he regrets the recent leadership crisis in the APC since the court order that sacked Adams Oshimhole as the party’s chairman.

“I do not lament his (Buhari) intervention or its outcome. I lament that the situation degenerated to the point where he felt compelled to intervene,” Tinubu said.

On the formation of the interim committee affecting his purported 2023 presidential ambition, Tinubu stated that those behind such claims should be pitied.

He said the persons behind the insinuations about his rumoured ambition “have assigned colourful epitaphs to the 2023 death of an alleged political ambition that is not yet even born.”

Tinubu appealed “to all former members of the [APC] National Working Committee and all members of our party to sheathe their swords and look to the larger picture.”