As the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) prepares to elect its candidates for the various positions ahead of the 2027 general elections, the party’s legacy group has backed the warning by the APC National Chairman, Professor Nentawe Yilwatda to the newly defected governors and other stakeholders to avoid stoking crisis in the battle for the structure and tickets of the party.
The APC has been reported to have been engulfed in crisis in several states, following attempts by defected governors to take over the party's structures, as well as pick their preferred allies as consensus candidates to pick tickets ahead of the upcoming elections.
This is even as the party had recently released its timetable for the conduct of primaries to elect candidates for the 2027 general elections.
The national chairman of the party, Prof Nentawe Yiltwada, had during a recent media briefing, assured legacy members of the party that political defectors would not be allowed to take over its leadership structures.
The national chairman drew a distinction between those who were in the party from the beginning and those who just joined, saying the interest of both would be protected without allowing one to subsume the other. “It is a home that we built. if the house was not built, nobody will come, so nobody should come as a warrior and take over,” he said.
He added that the solution however was in a deliberate power-sharing formula that guarantees inclusion across both blocs.
“We must have everybody included, there will be a sharing formula that will ensure that all members of the legacy group and defectors are properly carried along”, Yilwatda said.
Supporting the chairman's position, the APC legacy group in a statement issued on Thursday in Abuja noted that while the defectors should be carried along as members of one big family, the party should also recognise those Legacy members who it said have remained steadfast and believed and ŵorked in the APC, even when the party was then seen with scorn by the new converts.
The Legacy group, which consists of APC foundation members from the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Congress for Progressive Change (CPC)), All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and the others, in the statement issued by their coordinator, Ambassador Fubara Dagogo, emphasized the numerous contributions of the group to the growth of the APC, adding that they remained focused and propagated their strong believe in the future of the merger, until it became a bigger brand with attractions at this moment
"As a group, we faced series of attacks, called names, rejected by those who have become the major beneficiaries of our sweat today. Through our steadfastness, APC has become a brand that every body wants to identify with today. It is our believe that while we accept everyone, the party must not be totally handed over to the later day converts. We know they have the war chest to muscle the structure away from the real founders, and give tickets to their allies, under the new consensus structure.
"The APC Legacy group will continue to fight for equity, justice and unity in our party, especially at this period that we have resolved to be in the forefront of the battle to secure a second term for our dear president Bola Tinubu. We therefore urge the National leadership of our party to call these defectors to order. This is because their overzealous move to take full control of the party’s structure at the ward, local government and state levels, as well as hijack the primaries process could spell doom for the APC ahead of the elections
"They met people on ground and attempts to sideline those who have held the party and made it this attractive for them to join now, would be counter productive as we honestly do not know the full mission of these defecting governors and their supporters in our party, " the group warned.