According to reports, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate for president, intends to recruit an additional 2000 members to his Presidential Campaign Council.
Tinubu recently revealed a campaign council with 422 members, but reports claim that several governors and APC National Chairman Adamu Abdullahi were not pleased with the selection.
A letter that Adamu is said to have addressed to Tinubu on September 29, 2022, revealed the dispute over the list.
Adamu purportedly charged Tinubu in the letter with ignoring the party's National Working Committee when appointing the campaign council.
The ideas and goals of the agreements between him and Tinubu, he claimed, were not reflected in the list.
Governors Ben Ayade of Cross Rivers State and AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq of Kwara State did not like the selection either.
After making considerable attempt to find individuals who might garner support and deliver votes for Tinubu and the APC in the 2023 elections, the governors reportedly expressed dismay over the exclusion of their choices.
According to reports, the governors complained to Adamu and Atiku Bagudu, governor of Kebbi State and chairman of the Progressive Governors Forum.
Members of the NWC have also disowned the PCC list, saying Tinubu, who is currently out of the country did not allow them to properly vet the names before he made the premature announcement.
Meanwhile, the APC has dismissed the perceived rancor between Adamu and Tinubu over the presidential campaign council list.
Following reports on Adamu’s allegation against Tinubu over the list, the ruling party in a statement on Thursday said the letter did not emanate from the party.
The APC said Adamu and Tinubu have effective channels of communication, adding that the letter which it described as an ‘unsigned draft’ cannot be attributed to the chairman of the party.
The ruling party said it won’t be distracted by the wishes of detractors who are gleefully waiting for a crisis to erupt between the party and the presidential campaign council.
However, the spokesperson for the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Festus Keyamo has maintained that the PCC list Tinubu released on Friday, September 23, 2022, was inconclusive.
When asked what effort the party and its presidential candidate are making to address grievances about the PCC list, Keyamo said a supplementary list of over 2,000 ‘membership cadre’ is on the way.
“All their nominees will be included. The list was released in two parts. The one we released was the first one. In the coming days, more than 2,000 additional names will be released,” he said.
Keyamo also dismissed the report on the claim by the NWC members that they were not allowed to vet the PCC list before it was released to the public.
The lawyer said there was no iota of truth in the report, adding that there was a proper synergy between the candidate and the NWC.