The
All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday ruled out sanctioning House
of Representatives Speaker Yakubu Dogara and former Chairman of the
Committee on Appropriations Abdulmuminin Jibrin for alleged budget
padding.
Deputy National Chairman (North) Senator
Lawal Shuaibu told reporters at the APC secretariat in Abuja that its
constitution empowers the party to take certain steps, but it would not
do so in order not to unsurp the functions of law enforcement agencies.
He said: “Article 7 (5) of the APC
constitution gives us the power to do certain things. So, you see, what
we are doing is the right thing. But only we don’t want that in the
public gallery”.
Shuaibu asked “what is padding? saying
the party would not sanction anybody for that. “What is of concern to
us is where any member contravenes the party constitution in his
conduct,” he said.
“That is why I referred you to Article 7
(5) of our party constitution. We are not a law enforcement
organisation. We don’t enforce law. We only ensure that the constitution
is complied with. All members of the party are answerable to the party
and answerable to their constituencies.
“The two members that are subjected to
this are elected or appointed members of the party including those that
are holding public office. So, you expect the party to sit down and
watch. No. We have to do our work. So, the question of sweeping anything
under the carpet does not arise at all. But we don’t want to do it in
the market place, in the party secretariat”.
On the funding of the party, Shuaibu
said: “We have a credible source of funding. Every member of APC in this
country pays N100. So far on our data base, we have 12.7million
registered members. Others are still waiting for us to just open our
portal to do their membership registration.
“Assuming those on our data base paid
their membership levies, just calculate N100 of 12.7million members for
you to know how much we can get. So we have our way of sourcing for
fund.”
Speaking on the complaint of hardship by
Nigerians, the former lawmaker said: “You are talking of hardship. This
government is just one year old. Sixteen years of destruction and you
want the magic in just only one year? Nobody is talking of 16 years of
the destruction that brought the hardship.
“But when the destruction was going on,
people were praying for somebody who could correct all these things and
reconstruct the country. But nobody said it will just happen overnight.
It is not possible. I think if you have a scratch on your hand now, it
will take some time to heal. But the system destroyed so many things. It
was an atmosphere where impunity was officially recognised”.
On filling vacant party positions, he
said: “There is a committee looking into our constitution, we are
waiting for them. It will be a mini-convention. What we want to do is to
amend some parts of our party constitution after operating this one for
about two years. Where it is inadequate we want to perfect it”
0 comments:
Post a Comment