I remain APC Secretary, says Akpandodehe

John Akpanudoedehe, Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC) on Tuesday said he remains the party’s scribe and has not resigned as reported in some sections of the media.

There were reports (not by this medium) that Akpanudoedehe earlier in the day tendered his resignation letter to Abubakar Bello, the acting chairman of the CECPC and Governor of Niger State.

But addressing journalists at the APC National Secretariat in Abuja, the caretaker secretary said he has not resigned and was discharging his duties.

He said: “I have read in social media that I have resigned as Secretary of the APC. I want to state that it is not true that I didn’t resign. If I had resigned, you would have seen my letter of resignation written by me. Someone cannot just say somebody is dead when he is alive.

“I am not bigger than the party, or bigger than the president who is a leader of the country. I am waiting for my national chairman to come back.

“We have done so much for this party. When we inherited this party, if you can recall, it was at its lowest ebb. We built the party and recovered a lot of grounds. We were able to register 41 million members. And we bought this secretariat of the party.

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“We have been able to recover what we lost. We lost and brought in a lot of governors. All the states we lost, we brought in two weeks. We have been able to go round this country and the Constitution that was a difficult thing to do, we have done it in less than one year. We have done reconciliation, ward, local governments and state congresses. And we are about to do the national convention. This is not the first time you are seeing a power play.

“I am waiting for the Chairman. If we have a directive from the president that we should resign, we are not bigger than the president, we will do so, if we hear from him. Somebody cannot say go and announce he is resigning.

“Someone cannot say what the president said. I have not received any letter from anywhere. As I said, nobody is bigger than the party. The issue is that, have I resigned, the answer is no. I am the National Secretary of the party”.

There was confusion in APC on Monday following reports of alleged removal of Mai-Mala Buni, CECPC Chairman and Governor of Yobe by President Muhamadu Buhari and his replacement with Bello, the Niger Governor.

Though Bello, a member of the Caretaker Committee who presided over the meeting of CPC and received the report of the zoning Committee of the March 26 National Convention of APC said he was operating as an acting Chairman in the absence of Buni since his absence.

Meanwhile, Bello while addressing journalists at the Secretariat said the National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of the party will be held next week, adding that the zoning Committee report has been received and adopted.

Bello said: “The report of the zoning formula has been submitted and adopted and it will be released any moment from now. I mean the zoning formula. Hopefully, by next week, the NEC meeting will be held.

“It is a continuation of yesterday’s meeting. And just know you are not going to be asking me the same thing tomorrow because we are going to be meeting everyday until convention so that we can put things together.

” Basically, today we looked at the convention sub-committee and we collected some of the reports from the committee hoping that tomorrow we will decide on the next step to take. Nothing much happened today”, he stated.