The Director General of the All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council and Governor of Plateau State, Dr Simon Lalong, on Friday, doused tension brewing among party supporters when he announced that members who didn’t make the PCC list have big roles to play at the regional, zonal and grassroots level.
Lalong made the clarification at the unveiling of the Action Plan and PCC inauguration at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa in Abuja on Friday.
The development is coming barely 24 hours after the APC released a fresh PPC list on Wednesday night to replace the previous 422-man team.
There were, however, few surprises on the harmonised list which saw the National Chairman of the party, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, rose to number two on the campaign list right below the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), who retains his position as the Chairman of the PCC.
In the same list, the names of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo; former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal; former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara and Director General of the Voice of Nigeria, Osita Okechukwu were conspicuously missing again.
More surprising were earlier names such as Minister of Labour, Dr Chris Ngige; embattled Senator of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, Chimaroke Nnamani; Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola and former Governor of Abia State, Orji Uzor Kalu, who were excluded from the fresh list.
Their exclusion set social media on fire and got Nigerians asking questions about why they were suddenly excluded.
There were new additions like Juju maestro, Sir Shina Peters in Creative Arts; Tinubu’s running mate, Senator Kashim Shettima; Dr Mahmood Ahmed and Imman Ibrahim were drafted into Fund Raising Directorate while a war veteran, Major General Cecil Esekhaigbe completed the Intelligence and Security Directorate.
Efforts made to reach the Chief Spokesman of the APC Presidential Campaign, Festus Keyamo; National Publicity Secretary of the party, Felix Morka and PCC Director of Media and Communications, Bayo Onanuga, proved abortive.
As of the time of filing this report, they neither picked the calls nor replied to the text messages sent to them.
But midway through his speech at Friday’s PCC inauguration, Lalong announced to the audience that the majority of members and party supporters who were dropped from the campaign list were given different roles to play at regional, zonal, state local government, ward and unit levels.
While appealing to aggrieved members to remain calm and support the party, the Plateau State governor disclosed that the PCC composition involved a lot of consultations to ensure the party has a robust team that will capture all stakeholders.
His statement read, “The PCC is aware that the composition of the leadership and membership of the various Committees may not have satisfied the yearnings of everyone.
“However, it is important to emphasise that everything possible has been done to come up with a list that captures virtually every interest. In addition, the structure outlined earlier will also give room for those whose names do not appear to be given roles at the Regional, Zonal, State Local Government, Ward and Unit levels. That way, everyone is captured in the campaigns.
“Therefore, we have carefully planned the structure to give roles to all members from the Unit, Ward, Local Government, State, Zonal, Regional and Federal Levels. That way, we are sure of not only getting everyone on board, but also able to easily track the roles played by each member in the campaign process. For the PCC, the days of people flying letters in Abuja while work suffers at the grassroots is over.
“The PCC is elated by the zeal and desire of party members across the nation and the Diaspora to serve in one position or the other during the campaigns. That is why we carefully devised a strategy to ensure that everyone is captured across the various levels of the party structure. With the blessings of Mr. President and the endorsement of the Party and our Candidate, we have chosen to carry out a bottom-up approach to the campaigns.”
