Crisis: APC chieftain, Ajumbe asks El-Rufai to apologise to Buni

A chieftain of All Progressive Congress (APC), Vitalis Ajumbe, who was a Commissioner in Imo State, has asked Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State to issue an apology to the chairman of the Caretaker Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC), Mai Mala Buni, over uncanny words he used against his fellow Governor while featuring on a national television.

Recall that during his outing in a television programme, El-Rufai had said that the APC Governors had a clear instruction from President Muhammadu Buhari to remove the Chairman of Caretaker Committee for sabotaging the party and being incompetent.

A statement titled ‘El-Rufai should apologize to Mai Mala Buni’, Ajumbe said “He misquoted the constitution of APC on zoning of the National Chairman and Presidential positions.

“APC constitution says that the National chairman and the President shall not come from the same zone. What it means here is an ‘elected President and not a presidential candidate.

“Simplified that when the President is elected, the National chairman from that zone which produced the President shall resign and the position goes to the other zone. I guess he may be projecting a Presidential aspirant from the South who may have agreed to make him his vice Presidential candidate because H.E. El-Ruffai does not ‘bark’ in vain.

“El-Ruffai was silent during the leadership of His Excellency, Mai Mala Buni, the Governor of Yobe State and the chairman APC Caretaker committee and I believe that he did not support him. For all I know, El-Rufai is not a member of The APC Caretaker committee or its spokesperson and does not have their mandate to talk on the zoning of the Party’s positions or on such official issues.

“He used hard words on his brother Governor, H.E Mai Mala Buni, as if they were on a boxing ring by using such harsh words which suggest that he was incompetent, selfish and intentionally tried to destroy APC”, Ajumbe said.

He also said the court order of November 2021 El-Rufai brandished on the television may be true, but said the Mai Mala Buni committee made up of respected and responsible Nigerians might have viewed it as inconsequential, may be after finding out the source or may have acted on it.

While arguing that it could not have been cited as a tool of destruction without first hearing from either him or any of his committee members who are still available, the APC Chieftain pointed out that “El-Rufai interview yesterday on Channel TV portrayed Buni as being incompetent not minding the resultant damages such insinuations will cause him especially in his State Yobe.

He cautioned the acting chairman, Abubakar Bello, saying “The newly ‘appointed’ APC National Chairman should be careful with those ambitious Governors and persons who would want to appropriate him for their selfish interests. Some of them who lost out in Mai Mala Buni leadership have now regrouped to appropriate the new Leadership.

“The new leader should endeavour to legitimize his position by summoning an emergency National Executive Meeting of APC which has that power to ‘appoint’ or otherwise. The NEC also has the power to dissolve the entire committee and appoint a new one”.