Yari: Buhari’s illness delaying APC convention

Abdulaziz Yari, Zamfara state governor, says the illness of President Muhammadu Buhari has put the national convention of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on hold.

He said Buhari’s absence has so far made it impossible for a meeting of the party’s national executive committee to take place.

Yari said this on Wednesday while speaking at a joint press conference with Bolaji Abdullahi, spokesperson of the APC, at the party’s national secretariat, Abuja.

“We have been on this matter of convention but you know that the president is the leader of this party, one, before getting to the convention, there is some kind of process, the national working committee (NWC) must agree on the time and at the same time we have to adopt what the report submitted by the national working committee to the larger NEC members which the president must be in attendance as a leader of the party and you know the situation of our president,” Yari said.

“We have been fixing time but because of his illness we are unable to hold the meeting but we have to put a kind of process in place so that we can at least a mid-term convention, it is not an elective convention.”

Yari said the party’s leaders will meet with Acting President Yemi Osinbajo on the matter.

“We have agreed collectively that we are going to meet with acting president. He should understand that he is acting in capacity of the president of the country as well as the vice-president,” he said.

The governor said the party’s congresses would hold on July 29 across states ahead of the convention.

He further noted that the senatorial bye-election victory of Ademola Adeleke on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party is “a wake-up call” to members of the APC.

“We discussed the election of Osun which we really know what happened, the media and everyone in the party, we know what happened, it was APC. PDP doesn’t have muscle to win the election and we are on top of the situation. It is a wake-up call on dealing with things like that in the future,” he said.

“We are in a democratic setting, of course, a delegate is from APC, his immediate past brother is from APC and we all know what happened. We have discussed that intensively and measures have been taken to avoid future occurrences.”