Mama Taraba, Adebayo Shittu: Why APC Disqualified Them

The National Chairman of the APC, Adams Oshiomhole, on Friday said the party had to disqualify the Minister of Communication, Adebayo Shittu and his Women Affairs counterpart, Aisha Al-Hassan in order to protect the party’s core values.

He said this at a press conference, in Abuja, on Friday.

Oshiomhole said the party’s governorship screening committee was not convinced with explanations offered by Shittu that his service as lawmaker in the Oyo State Assembly and Minister was equivalent to the National Youth Service Corps scheme.

According to him, Nigeria’s laws were clear on the issue of the NYSC. As for the Minister of Women Affairs, Aisha Al-Hassan, he said she was disqualified because the party was not convinced about her loyalty.

Oshiomhole said “As for the Honourable Minister of Women Affairs, she has issues that have to do with party loyalty. Our constitution is clear and it dictates that to contest elections or even hold office in the APC, you must be loyal to the party in every material concern.

“From all she had said in the past and even her comments and general attitude during the screening, the NWC reviewed everything taken together and we arrived at the conclusion that she does not possess the level of loyalty that the APC requires for her to contest elections on our platform.

“We made it clear when the defections happened that the APC may well benefit from these defections if it helps us to be more critical in terms of whom we give platform to contest elections and that there are core values that binds the APC together and they are non-negotiable.

“The Electoral Act and the APC constitution forbid anyone from being a member of more than one political party at a time. You cannot be a member of APC and be a card carrying member of another party but when you have a situation where it would appear, based on what you know and based on what I know that someone is probably APC in the day time maybe for the purpose of retaining certain offices and they are PDP at heart.”

Earlier, the party had cleared the Kaduna state Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, his Kano and Kebbi State counterparts, Abdullahi Ganduje and Abubakar Bagude respectively, to run as sole aspirants in Sunday’s APC Governorship primaries in their States.