The All Progressives Congress, Friday in Abuja has said that the much-expected Unity List proceeding from the wide consultations on consensus to pick party leaders would be ready soon.
The party also reaffirmed that the consensus remains its most preferred mode of choosing its next set of leaders nationwide.
The Chairman of the National Convention Media and Publicity Sub-committee, Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa State, made this known while fielding questions from our correspondent at the party’s World Press conference held at its national secretariat on Friday.
cleared the air on recent reports on political appointees being barred from being delegates at Saturday’s convention.
He said, “From what we have on the various regions, the unity list will be ready today. It will be submitted. If you are talking of consensus, you must have a unity list, because that’s the whole essence of consensus.
“If you’re having consensus, you’re going to have people who have agreed, aspirants who have agreed, stakeholders who have agreed, and also the constituency that has agreed, and in that case, that name automatically will be adopted. And that’s just the meaning of the unity list.”
On political appointees being barred from participating in electoral capacity at the convention, he explained, “Our delegates list are statutory delegates. So if you have a former president as a political appointee, if you have a former senator as a political appointee, these are already automatic delegates.
“So let’s not confuse the two just because being an appointee doesn’t necessarily take you out of being a delegate, because our delegates are classified clearly. Former president from our party, former elected personalities, party officials and the rest of that. I don’t think anybody who holds any political party office is right now a political appointee of the President, or the governors and the rest of that.
“So most of the list that we submitted if you are talking of the ones who have submitted now, we don’t have commissioners, we don’t have advisors, we don’t have all those unless if somebody particularly was a former office this or former that. In that case, just being an appointee doesn’t completely exclude such a person from being a delegate.”
Credit: Punch