Akume donates 20m nomination fee to Party
By Joel Oladele, Abuja
One of the aspirants who contested the chairmanship position of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the just concluded National Convention of the party and Minister of Special Duties and Inter Governmental Affairs, George Akume, has said he has willingly donated his 20 million nomination fee meant for the purchase of interest and Nomination forms to the party and also tasked others to follow suit.
Recall that after the party agreed on a consensus chairmanship candidate, President Muhammadu Buhari directed the leadership of the APC to refund the money paid for nomination forms by aspirants who agreed to put the party’s interest above theirs by stepping down for the consensus candidate.
Akume, while fielding questions from journalists during a solidarity visit to the APC national chairman, Sen. Abdullahi Adamu, accompanied by the party’s national Secretary, Sen. Iyiola Omisore expressed his readiness to support the leadership of the party in order to compliment the good works of the president.
“I had willingly donated my own to the party and I believe others would do the same thing. We have this basic understanding, we have to support the present leadership of the party to succeed. That is what is important so that we will continue with the good work that Mr president is doing.
“Basically we are here on a solidarity visit, we come to congratulate the chairman for being elevated to the exalted position of chairman of the greatest party in Africa.
“This is a party that has a membership of over 42 million Nigerians. Clearly legitimised by the photograph that we have on each form and I can say at a point that our junior partners have tried to do what we did so successfully.
“The revalidation exercise, they tried twice and they failed twice. So we are very proud of this record that we are the biggest political party in West Africa.”
Speaking on the internal crisis in Benue state, he said such is expected of a big political party like the APC but are not sufficiently strong enough to break the organic unity of the party in Benue state.
“We want to assure Nigerians particularly the APC and indeed the national chairman that the little irritation in Benue state are going to be squarely addressed for the benefit of our party and for the benefit of our teaming supporters who look unto the APC as the only hope of the common man in Benue state and even at the national level.
“So we are very confident that APC Benue will come on stronger than you can ever imagine. We are doing very well, we have registered so many members. We have registered those who are ready to vote and therefore, Benue is ready to go.”
Speaking further on the directives by President Buhari on consensus candidate, the former governor of Benue State stated that the president did not give directives, rather he appealed to all Aspirants to accept Adamu as the chairman of the party.
“The issue of directives did not occur whatsoever in our dinner with Mr president. We ate dinner with him and he appealed to us to build the consensus as much as we could and that was basically what we did. It was not a directive and you know who the president is; a democratic to the core.
“I know and I recall what happened in the past when I was the governor, there was a war of difference between the way Mr. President operates and the way we saw between 1999 and 2007,” Akume clarified.
