Tinubu to placate aggrieved party members by adding an extra 2,000 members to campaign team

ALL Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is planning to include an additional 2,000 party members in the newly constituted campaign council to placate those who were unhappy with his original 422-man body.

On Wednesday this week, APC)chairman Senator Abdullahi Adamu has written to Asiwaju Tinubu asking him to withdraw the recently-published Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) list so it can be discussed further. After a five hour meeting, the NWC decided to withdraw the list, announcing that it regretted that it was released without recourse to the party’s national leadership.

Subsequently, Senator Adamu wrote a letter titled Release of the Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council List, which he has since been sent to Asiwaju Tinubu. In the letter, the NWC asked Asiwaju Tinubu to restrain the PCC from undertaking solo projects and agreed to work with all stakeholders towards taking the party to victory.

In a bid to placate the unhappy NWC members and state governors who were dissatisfied with the 422-member campaign council, Asiwaju Tinubu has agreed to form a bigger one. His original list had President Muhammadu Buhari as the chairman of the campaign council, with Asiwaju Tinubu and the APC national chairman Senator Adamu, as co-deputy chairmen.

However, the composition of the PCC did not reportedly go down well with some APC governors, especially Governors Ben Ayade of Cross River State and Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq of Kwara State. They were said to have expressed shock over the exclusion of their nominees after the painstaking efforts they took to identify potential candidates who could mobilise support and deliver votes for the party.

They were said to have tabled their grievances with the chairman of the Progressive Governors Forum, Governor Atiku Bagudu of Kebbi State  and Senator Adamu. NWC members also disowned the PCC list, saying the presidential candidate did not allow them to properly vet the names before he made the premature announcement.

While arguing that the composition of a presidential campaign council is something that ought to be done jointly by the candidate and the party, the aggrieved NWC members maintained that the list contains certain names that should not have been added because they have little or no electoral value. Festus Keyamo, the party PCC spokesman, confirmed that the original list released was inconclusive.