The All Progressives Congress leaders from North-West on Thursday held a crucial meeting over the choice of the vice-presidential slot for the party’s presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and other issues affecting the party in the zone.
Rising from the meeting attended by APC governors, governorship candidates and ministers in Kaduna, the North-West leaders resolved to meet with Tinubu to present their case.
This was contained in a statement issued by the APC National Vice-Chairman (North-West), Salihu Lukman, on Thursday.
Although the statement was silent on whether the meeting was on the vice-presidential slot, it was gathered that it was part of the agenda.
But Lukman, in the statement disclosed that the meeting supported the initiative to commence the consultative meeting as vital for strengthening the APC in the North-West as well as improve leadership engagements and cohesion within the zone.
According to him, the governors and political officeholders reviewed the state of the party at the national and zonal levels and also acknowledged the challenges facing some APC state chapters and resolved to promote efforts at reconciliation as an urgent priority.
He said, “The meeting noted the contribution of the North-West to the emergence and growth of the APC and its electoral viability, with the North-West providing about 39 per cent of the votes the APC recorded in 2019 and 2015 presidential elections.
“Therefore, the zone resolved to aggregate its interests and vital concerns and engage accordingly with the presidential candidate of the party.”
When asked how the APC hopes to neutralise the renewed threat posed by Ibrahim Shekarau’s defection to the New Nigeria Peoples Party, Lukman stated that the party’s challenge was not about the perception of the political strength of the former senator representing Kano Central district, who defected to the New Nigeria Peoples Party.
He stated that Shekarau had never been a problem to the APC even in Kano.
He said, “Remember that in 2015, Shekarau was not in APC and we won. So the dynamics of winning an election are not about the individual presence and we recognise that the APC has so many influential members. We are taking the right step to take care of all that in our negotiation.
“Whether anybody likes it or not, we have asked people to look at the 2015 and 2019 elections; the North-West alone gave APC 39 per cent votes. Go and check, compare it to North-East and tell us what they gave to the party. But we are not taking that as a substitute.
“At the end of the day, we want to retain our support in both North-East and North-West at the centre. That is what those of us in the party are working on,” he added.
Then prodded further if the ‘vital concerns’ that the North-West delegation plans to discuss with Tinubu has to do with his running mate slot, Lukman averred that it goes beyond the VP slot.”