The party currently in control of the country at the federal level has been engulfed in a power tussle for the past week since a Court of Appeal in Abuja upheld the suspension of Adams Oshiomhole as national chairman.
Atiku took to his Twitter account on Thursday to praise his own Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as an example of the order and constitutionality needed to sustain genuine democracy in Nigeria.
“I pray that the order, discipline and constitutionality, which we, as a party have exemplified, should guide institutions of our democracy, especially other political parties.
“Without law and order in a party, a party cannot provide law and order to Nigeria,” he posted.
Atiku is a former member of the APC which he joined in 2014 after a major division in the leadership ranks of the PDP heading into the 2015 presidential election which he hoped to participate in.
He returned to the PDP in 2018 to further his bid to become president, but lost to APC’s President Muhammadu Buhari in the 2019 presidential election.
APC leadership crisis
A majority of the APC’s National Working Committee (NWC) ratified the appointment of former Oyo governor, Abiola Ajimobi, who’s also the party’s deputy national chairman (South), as its acting national chairman to replace Oshiomhole.
Due to Ajimobi’s current hospitalisation with the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Hilliard Etta, the party’s vice-chairman (South-South), was appointed to act on his behalf.
However, Victor Giadom, the party’s deputy national secretary, declared himself the acting national chairman, claiming he was entitled to take over from Oshiomhole because a court had granted such a request in March 2020.
The party dismissed his claim saying he was no longer a member of the NWC because he resigned to contest as deputy governor in the 2019 Rivers State governorship election, and was yet to be readmitted.
He was then suspended by the Rivers chapter of the APC, and replaced in the NWC by Worgu Boms, who was sworn in on Monday, June 22.
Despite his suspension, Giadom wrote to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Tuesday, June 23, to say a National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting would take place at the Presidential Villa on Thursday.
Giadom got a major boost when President Buhari announced on Wednesday that the position of the law favours him.
The president also called on every member of the NEC to attend the meeting which is ongoing at the time of this report.
