APC must embrace rule of law, internal democracy – Atiku

The seeming crises rocking the All Progressives Congress took a new turn on Wednesday with former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, saying the party must not fall below the basic standards of democratic practice in the conduct of its internal affairs.

Abubakar said this in a statement few days after another party chieftain, Bola Tinubu, had publicly berated the party chairman, John Oyegun, for allegedly subverting the due process and imposing  a gubernatorial candidate on the party in Ondo state.

Tinubu accused Oyegun of representing the dark forces within the party, faulting him for forwarding of the name of Rotimi Akeredolu to the Independent National Electoral Commission despite massive protests over the circumstances surrounding his emergence in the last primary.

In his take, Abubakar said it was important for the national leadership of the party to stop breaking its own rules to avoid internal crises.

According to him, the party was supposed to be an impartial entity in the arbitration of crisis amongst its members.

He insisted that since the APC leadership was able to establish valid grounds to cancel the Ondo state primary election and call for a fresh one, the decision to deviate from its own resolution was not good for the party’s integrity.

“It was wrong for the APC to have set aside a resolution it had reached aimed at resolving the crisis in our party in Ondo State. It is a recipe for acrimony and division,” he said.

Abubakar noted that pretending a problem doesn’t exist won’t make that problem go away.

He, however, urged aggrieved members of the APC in the Ondo election to exercise restraint in seeking redress.

He also urged the leadership of the party to retrace its steps and undo what it did on the Ondo situation.