President Muhammadu Buhari today maintained that despite he is being accused of aloofness, and lack of grip in his party affairs, he is still the leader of the party.<\/p>\n
He made veiled reference to remarks by some senior members of the party who have refused to recognize Buhari as leader of the party as it was during the days of Ex President’s Goodluck Jonathan, and Olusegun Obasanjo.<\/p>\n
Top brass, and one of the leaders, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu had indicted the president for failing to get involved in the party’s affair which led to the current messy situation within the party’s caucus in the National Assembly.<\/p>\n
\u00a0According to Tinubu; \u201cDespite the choice of National Assembly leaders being a mixture of party politics and legislative duty, the aloofness, or the perceived neutrality of the President allowed the \u2018fight\u2019 within APC to fester until it went of hand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spokesman, Lai mohammed had also derided the president when he insisted that Buhari is not the party leader but ‘a product of the APC’, but that the leader is Tinubu.<\/p>\n
He had said ”\u00a0President Muhammadu Buhari is not our leader, he is a product of the party. Tinubu is our leader\u201d<\/p>\n
But on Channels TV’s programme earlier today, the president maintained that he remained consistent in his belief that the legislature is independent and that would guide his approach to the leadership crisis.<\/p>\n
The crisis in the National Assembly has been blamed on the APC\u2019s seeming stance that they do not have an individual as their leader, who could drive the effort to unify the party in times of crisis, but speaking for his boss today, presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu disagreed.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoes it need to be said? I don\u2019t think it needs to be said that the President is the leader of his party. There\u2019s no question about it,\u201d Mr Shehu said.<\/p>\n
He added that there is need for Nigerians to understand the basics of politics as the country is no more in the military era when decrees are made by a single leader.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolitics, as its theory says, is basically about contest for interests and these interests may be fully defined by political party programme (while) some of these things may be outside political party programme,\u201d he said, adding that coming from different states there would be different needs influencing the interests every politician would promote.<\/p>\n
He also noted that the lawmakers should be appreciated for allowing varying views, \u201cThey just cannot pile up in a single line and say \u2018here we are, we are all present\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the governors met with the President they told him that \u2018we are the leaders in our states and we have influence over all of these senators. They come from our places and from us and we can handle it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He affirmed that if the governors are unable to resolve the matter then the President would wade in directly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe President has a responsibility to the party, the President has a responsibility to the nation and as far as we are looking at the situation it has not gotten out of control. It is still within manageable parameters, it is a little storm we will overcome and Nigerians better get used to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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President Muhammadu Buhari today maintained that despite he is being accused of aloofness, and lack of grip in his party affairs, he is still the leader of the party. He…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exclusive"],"yoast_head":"\n