The National Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Ajibola Basiru, has warned Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, to stop destabilizing the party and urged him to resign from President Bola Tinubu’s administration if he can’t stop interfering in party affairs.
Basiru stated that Wike, not being an APC member, lacks the authority to meddle in the party’s internal affairs, especially in Rivers State.
The face-off between the duo began when Wike warned Basiru to steer clear of Rivers State politics, citing allegations of APC leaders scrambling for the state’s N600 billion coffers.
Basiru countered that Wike’s comments were baseless and an attempt to import PDP’s spirit into APC, adding that his own integrity is unquestionable.
Basiru in a terse statement issued on Monday in Abuja said his attention had been drawn to what he described as “the tirade of the Minister of the FCT against my person and my office as the National Secretary of the APC,” following his position that “all members of the NWC must accord any sitting Governor his due respect and that the Governors remain the leaders of the Party in their States.”
He expressed shock that “such an innocuous statement can elicit such uncouth responses from no less than a member of the Federal Executive Council.”
Basiru insisted that it was incompatible for Wike to remain in the cabinet of an APC-led government while allegedly causing internal disarray within the party, stating, “he cannot be in the Federal Executive Council of an APC Government and be causing confusion within any organ or structure of the Party at any level, using the leverage of that same office.”
He added that “the honourable thing to do is to resign his appointment as Minister.”
The APC scribe stressed that Wike lacked the standing to interfere in the party’s internal affairs, stating emphatically that “our records indicate that Minister Nyesom Wike is not a member of our Party APC so he lacks the locus to dabble into the affairs our Party.”
