From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The National Working Committee (NWC) of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has said the composition of external audit panel has nothing to do with speculated financial recklessness of the Abdullahi Adamu-led leadership.
Party’s immediate past Vice Chairman North West, Salihu Moh Lukman, had repeatedly accused the erstwhile National Chairman, Abdullahi Adamu and National Secretary, Iyiola Omisore, of reckless financial spending while in charge of the party.
Consequent upon that, the party, during the recent National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting, had set up an external audit panel to scrutinise the finances of the ruling party.
But addressing newsmen after the inaugural NWC meeting under Abdullahi Ganduje, the National Secretary, Ajibola Basiru, described the setting up of audit panel as a routine, standard procedure and normal practices everywhere.
“We should not misrepresent the reasons for resignation of our chairmen. I don’t know where you got your financial recklessness you are talking about.
“On the issue of external auditors being appointed, it has been the routine of our party to appoint external auditors, and it is a standard procedure and practices everywhere. It has nothing to do with resignation of any officer of our party. And if you go back, there has not been a year that the party account has not been audited by external auditors.” He also dismissed complaint over the size of the ministerial nominees from President Bola Tinubu, insisting that he has not done anything wrong.
“By the constitution of Nigeria, every state is expected to have at least ministerial nominee. For the first time, the president appointed a nominee from the FCT for which the FCT people where happy.
“It is mandatory, we must have a minimum of 37 ministers by constitutional provisions. So adding an additional 10 on, I think it is prerogative of the executive. Section five of the Constitution is clear that the President is vested with executive powers, for which he may exercise directly, personally or through ministers that he has appointed.”
On replacement of members of the NWC that resigned, left the party or died, National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka, disclosed that the party was still consulting with relevant stakeholders.
On the agenda for the meeting, he said: “We just rose from the 128 meeting of the NWC of our party. We had our first meeting with a new national chairman, were we had a very lean agenda, but really loaded with important items. The first and most important thing I would like to mention is that we did have a conversation about the composition of the complete Council for the off-season elections in Imo, Bayelsa and Kogi States. We did go into discussion about how to fashion a national campaign councils for each of the states. Each of the states also will have to put together their own state campaign councils. “We did look at the criteria for bringing people together to populate the council in order to provide the needed support to the state campaign councils and to energize the capital of the party to ensure that, come the election we will prevail in winning those states for our party.
“We also dealt with matters regarding the finances of the party, with our new chairman and Secretary, it was important to bring them up to date with where we are with our finances as a party so that they can be on the same page with those of us who have been here.
“It was important we update them as senior officers of the party so they will know how effectively to play their role. We did discuss as well some internal matters, issues of systems, how to improve our internal processes to ensure that we continue to be effective and efficient, not as in the use of our resources but also in the use of our time and the question of prioritizing what we do and how we do them.
“The National Secretary did come up with very useful suggestions which was discussed and again to underscore the commitment of the new leadership of the party to not just winning elections, as we are poised to do with the campaign councils but also in ensuring that our interna