… Says hard work driving membership upwards, as 23 new opposition candidates join party.
From Cyril Mbah, Abuja.
The National Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, (APC), Senator Surajudeen Ajibola Basiru, has said the ruling party is not interested and is not aspiring to turn Nigeria into a one-party state, but observed that its functional structures and hard work have inevitably yielded unprecedented increase in membership and a semblance of dominance.
Speaking at the Muhammadu Buhari House, the national secretariat of the APC in Abuja on Friday while receiving 11 National and State Assembly candidates of the opposition into the party, Basiru said even the defectors can attest to the fact that their former parties cannot boast of decent secretariats like the APC.
He said the APC National Working Committee is led by a professor and parades three PhD holders, former senators, former House of Representatives members, former commissioners and Senior Advocates of Nigeria, stressing that the NWC is run as a serious organisation, not a pedestrian arrangement.
Basiru argued that the 2027 general election is not about President Bola Ahmed Tinubu alone but about Nigeria, progress, unity and cohesiveness, warning against those trying to create division for inordinate ambition.
He took a swipe at former Minister Rotimi Amaechi for criticising the proposed seaport in Ogun State and other opposition figures who he described as living off the state since 1999 without working, yet aspiring to lead.
The National Secretary also dismissed critics of the administration’s reforms, particularly as it sffects fuel subsidy removal, insisting that subsidy is gone forever and urging Nigerians to understand the difference between price modulation and subsidy.
He said the era when states could not pay salaries and had to take overdrafts is now in the past and the country has returned to self-sufficiency.
He cited the administration’s education interventions, noting that over 1.4 million students have benefited from NELFUND as tuition fees are paid with an additional upkeep allowance of 20,000 per student monthly, adding that contrary to claims by critics like Dino Melaye, the allowance is significant for vulnerable families. According to him, the message of the new entrants is “forward ever, backward never.”
Corroborating him, the National Chairman of the APC, who formally received the defectors from five states – Sokoto, Kaduna, Jigawa, Kano and Plateau – described their decision to join the APC as a decisive action to reinforce belief in President Tinubu and his Renewed Hope Agenda.
The Chairman said President Tinubu has been a consistent champion of national unity, recalling that he supported Atiku Abubakar in 2007, Nuhu Ribadu under the ACN in 2011, and President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 and 2019 for the sake of power rotation and cohesion, but was abandoned by many of those beneficiaries when he chose to contest in 2023.
He listed what he described as massive infrastructure investments in the North to debunk claims that the President has neglected the region, citing the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano road, Kano-Maiduguri road, Kano-Katsina, Sokoto-Illela, Sokoto-Kebbi-Lagos six-lane corridor with rail and over 300 dams, the Kano-Maradi rail line, the Kaduna-Kano double gauge, and the Kano metro line. He compared the 700km Lagos-Calabar coastal road to over 900km of roads under construction in the North alone.
On the economy, the Chairman said the Tinubu administration has cleaned up the mess of past governments, paying over N10 trillion in outstanding obligations to foreign investors, over N1 trillion owed to foreign airlines, trillions in gas and power generation debts, and unpaid pensions of workers of liquidated entities like Nigeria Airways, railways and other privatised companies.
He accused former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of selling national assets at scrap value, citing the Aluminium Smelting Company in Akwa Ibom built for $3.5 billion and sold for less than $130 million and the Ajaokuta and Delta Steel companies built for over $1.5 billion each and sold for $30 million, saying such persons should not be considered for leadership.
Earlier, the leader of the defectors, Princess Dr. Aslam Aliyu, founder of Baba Tinubu Fisa Bililai 2027, said her group has in two weeks facilitated the entrance of 23 opposition candidates into the APC, with 12 ADC House of Assembly candidates two weeks ago and 11 House of Representatives and House of Assembly candidates from the NDC and ADC this week, all verifiable on the INEC portal.
Princess Aslam said the defections are not mere political moves but clear demonstrations of confidence in President Tinubu and the Renewed Hope Agenda as a pathway to national recovery, declaring that if politics is a contest of influence, her group’s scoreboard reads 2-0 against the ADC presidential camp.
She formally presented the 11 candidates for acceptance into the party, assuring that the APC remains resolute in mobilising support for President Tinubu’s re-election in 2027.
