 APC national chairman Abdelahi Adam, who faces battle to remain the party chairman and suspend all actions on Mr. Mann says that reps to jam. And this is plus politics. I am Mary Annacolle. Following his disapproval of principal officers of the National Assembly, announced by Senate President Goswyl Aquaville and Speaker of the House of Representatives in Abbas. And on Tuesday, there are strong indications that the National Chairman of the All Progressive Congress, APC, Senator Abdelahi Adam, is facing a battle to remain the party's chairman. And it was also gathered that the president is currently shopping for Adam's replacement and will make his position known when the party holds his National Executive Committee on July 11. Joining us to discuss this is Tunji Abdul Amid. He's a legal practitioner and also joining us is Subway Eli. He's a legal practitioner and is a member of the All Progressive Congress in River State. Thank you so much, gentlemen, for joining us. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you for having me. Good evening, Subway. So, I want to start with you because you're a member of the All Progressive Congress and there have been subtle rumblings within the party over the past few months, even before the 2023 general elections. We saw, even when it came to the selection of certain officers who were going to lead, in fact, the Senate President and the Speaker, we saw some rumblings and grumbling within the party. We saw people who kicked against what the party had called its anointed fellows for the position, the likes of Senator Abbas. It seems that right now there's some sort of trouble in Paradise for the chairman of your party. It could be time for a shake-up in the APC nationally. Subway, can you hear me? Okay, Tunji, I'm going to toss that question to you until we're able to get Subway back in. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, Subway, go ahead. Yeah, it's unfortunate that we have to start the 10th Assembly with crises. One would have told that the party will remain supreme for all times. The party had taken the position, I had the emergence of Senator Fabio as the Senate President and the right-of-the-bottom General Abbas as Speaker, of course, with their respective deputies. Now, such a fifth of the constitution provides for election of House officers by respective members, members of the Kim Yanis. However, even though some people kicked, I can only let the party for being able to pull it through. And now for this whole strand of officers, Majority Leader, Deputy Majority Leader, Chief Weep, Deputy Chief Weep and all that, with both houses. One would have also thought that the same discipline would allow the party to take the lead to continue. And if I have my facts right, what National Chairman Adelaide Amun Senator is simply sitting on is the party should hold the reins, the party should call the shots in every constitutional democracy such as ours, where parties are the platform upon which we will run elections. This is expected. I do not know how anybody gets in the office. Suddenly, just since the Supreme Supreme of the Party, the right-dependent candidate for God's sake, the party would, I'll tell you my 12 times, work towards strengthening the position of the party and giving strength to the government that's better. So I think, respect to whatever legislations are rising, whoever thinks that the removal of the party chairman would be a recipe for the problems that are trying to avoid is going to exacerbate the crisis. The opposite party, the PDP, is already in a mess because of same leadership issues. In a democracy such as ours, one can never say, the moment you have this high turnover of National Chairman of the party or the members of the National Working Committee, you create a crisis environment. It will not be long. Everybody will be at back as drawn. And then the government itself will be distracted because you start to fight too early in the day. Don't forget, it's a four-year journey. I see what you and others have to settle down and deliver what the party has promised Nigerians. For me, the National Chairman was elected at the convention and the party constitution is clear about how to remove him. If removing him in a manner that suggests a subversion of the constitution, whether elected or not, where it comes from, they say, every good to dog has an owner. And the owners of the dog are good to not be happy that you're slaughtering the animals. For you, it might be a bit, but for them, it's their pets. So it's important that we realize that it's not too early in the day. I think the president should intervene. President, people who are showing the capacity for leadership that had perverse generations. Adelaide Damu happens to be a member of his class of 1999 governors. When he was governor of legal, Adelaide Damu was governor of National House states. To that extent, their contemporaries are everywhere. It's not be too hard for him, therefore, to reach out to him and smoothen the edges. There are any rough edges, imagine. The second government happened in two, Ejio Nakume, also Senator, also called for the same class of 1999 governors. So it's easier to navigate through the whole maze and get to some kind of approach more. I think that it's too early in the day to start a fight. And if APC goes into this kind of battle at this stage, it may not come out better. I foresee a situation where if I'm not careful what happened in 2019, what happened, we came off in the back of the victory in 2015 against the PDP. And no one's immediately removed. Is that so? Sorry, John O'Digga, you go. I don't assume you came in. The turbulence that follows, the APC at the end of the day in 1919 lost five states. Includes Afarrawa have lost everything. I thought I won everything. I think that that's a red flag that we have right now. What can I afford to have another crisis with PDP itself? If you try it this time, I might lose again in 2023. In 2017, I beg your pardon. Okay. Let me push you a bit further because many would say that this is not the first time that this has happened. So, just as you clearly stated, we've had the Oyegun situation and then, of course, we had it strongly and now we have a double. But let's look at the president wading in on this matter. There are those who are saying that the president should hand us that this is purely a national assembly matter and it should be dealt with by members of the national assembly as opposed to the party interloping and getting its hands dirty. Hence the people calling for the head of the chairman of the party. I mean, you're on one hand calling for the president to wade into the matter because you think that he might be able to solve it. But many are saying that the president should hands off and that this does not concern the president and either doesn't concern the chairman of the party. That's not correct. I would not go with that kind of reasoning. Every member of the national assembly was elected on the party platform and that's why, apart from the consistently organized offices of the senate president, deputy senate president, speaker and deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, the House rules and senate rules were right for other presidential officials of the respective chambers. Now there is a majority office, an office of minority in the opposite. So the party positions are along those lines. Now if you don't moderate the tensions and say the party should stay away or the president should stay away, the president himself is elected on the party platform. So how would he ask him to stay away? There must be moderation in the forces otherwise it's going to be everybody goes a dagger's drawn and then there'll be price everywhere. My calculation is that the APC are not fully matured into one single jail. In 2015 we came as an amalgam of different legacy parties. So the first shock that came, I had a 2019, we almost collapsed. It's said that in the past they did not have a candidate at all. It's that for a lot of candidates who won elections everywhere, they had to lose everything by judicial fiat. Who lost all your states, who lost Bakhti state, who lost about five states in a whole that were in a firm grip. We might need to consolidate in 2023. Now let's not also look at the fact that the PDP also can rebound. If the PDP does not rebound, member parties only show some strong promise. For me, it's too early in the day to have this crisis and I want to urge the president and not just to come to a round table to resolve this issue. Thankfully around the president, all the key players are street politicians, famous by Javier Mela, two of the staff, comes to the huge pedigree of experience, that's assembly. So you can't wait in at the level. Here's the president's political text. It should wait in. The second of the government federation is also a former senator who was at some point a governor. So it comes with a complex experience from the executive and the respective arms of government. The president himself was a former senator. His wife is a senator. So all around him, there's experience that should help him navigate through this process. I don't think that anyone that says the president should be aloof because it's a party matter, it's not a party matter, it should answer. No, internal affairs on assembly can cause a disabilization at the end of the day. We need to have a focused regime. We need to have a focused house. And the level can be focused on having a stable parliament where the president's policies can be driven through without care of some kind of incomes. Okay. All right. Let me go to Tungi. Tungi, you're a member of the People's Democratic Party. This is not new to the PDP because we know that the PDP at some point had its own fair share of chairmanship drama and inter-party drama, which one way or the other many would point to as a reason for which your party lost out in the 2023 general election. So again, as an outsider looking in, what do you make of this drama? Did the Senate president jump the gun? Yeah, being that the National Working Committee of the party had quickly disowned the announcement of those workers as opposed to what the party and the National Working Committee should have done because they're saying that this should have been their duty as opposed to Senator Acquavio jumping the gun. For me, firstly, let me say, I want to first of all disagree that PDP is in a mess. PDP is not in a mess. It's just a crisis, not like APC and other parties are going through the same crisis. All parties go through crisis. The only difference is that APC were able to, before the election, manage their crisis in a way that they were able to bear results. Thank God they don't have people like Governor Wiki, former Governor Wiki in their midst. Probably they would have been the same soon, like PDP. So let me just say that, look, it's only in Nigeria that where you see somebody will be a member of executive and he wants to also be part of the parliament. They want to control the parliament. They want to determine what happened in parliament. It's only in Nigeria where they will tell me the president will determine who becomes a president, who becomes a leader or should determine the leadership of the party, of the National Assembly. It's only in Nigeria where you see them, they say, party must be the one to determine who becomes a senior president or those who become the leaders of the party. It is where party democracy is necessary. In a democracy, that's what we call separation of power. There is National Assembly, there is executive. They all have their own role. The party has its own role. First I'm concerned, the role of the party and that of the president should be an advising role to them, not to tell them this is the people that should be, or they should be the one to determine who and who should be the leaders of the National Assembly. National Assembly is a separate outcome of the government and by section 50 of the constitution, they are giving the power to elect their own leaders at the National Assembly. What we see today is the institution whereby the president will have to determine who becomes the senior president. The president will have to determine who becomes the deputy senior president. The president will have to determine who becomes a leader of the National Assembly. You see, we can't have a system that will work because we will be having a system whereby the executive will determine and dominate what happens at the National Assembly because when you have a National Assembly that is choosing or that whose head is chosen by the executive, that head will be loyal to the executive and that is not what I'm not saying. They are talking about having a good leadership, but sometimes this leadership is not that leadership. The leadership of anything goes. They don't care what they have, that good leadership or rapport. Whatever you bring, they will pass it. You can't even look into it. You can see what happened at the National Assembly whereby the president said, whenever the president brings to them, they will approve it even without looking at it. And that was why a contract agreement was brought to them that was written in Chinese and it was passed by them without even knowing what is the agreement. So I don't want that conversation. At first I'm concerned. I recognize the right of the party to be involved or to be constructed or to be given information as to what to happen. It's not for them to dedicate to the National Assembly who and who should be the leader. Same detail to the secretary and the president. The president should not be the one to take the energy. Like I said, we often, our loyalty is to the president. And that's why we are not getting in this country. There is no loyalty to the country. The loyalty is to the president and to the party. Once the party is looking for a particular team, you must go in that direction. Do you want the party is not looking, is not going in that direction, you must, you know, cannot go there. The president, if he's not interested in a particular line of action by the party, that chairman must follow the president otherwise he will go. So I, so the system, we're having the system. Might I ask, because, you know, many would be, I'm trying to open the minds of a couple of people and not just because I'm starting standing in the gap for the APC. I mean, so the ACS speak for himself. And if the tables were turned, it's the same thing that the PDP would do because many would say that just like the PDP, the APC is, and, and, and, you know, vice versa. And this is the same thing that would happen if the PDP were in the position of the APC. These political parties seem to always exalt party and, of course, members of the executive above the people and the interests of the general public. Can you say that the PDP is totally different from the APC in this regard? As much as I'm not talking about PDP or APCA, but you see all the things that I have said, I talk about what should be, what how it should be, what should happen. I mean, whether PDP or APCA, I'm not saying that. And that's not to say that I admit that PDP would do the same thing or they would do worse than what they are doing now. Are you admitting or you're not admitting? I'm not admitting. They are not admitting. They are not telling you, I'm not admitting that that happens. That's their assumption. Because what we have now is APC. APC is in vandal. So let's see what they are doing. If we have APDPs in charge, we can say okay, but now they are not in charge. That would be everything I would say would be in the name of assumption and the presumption. So as far as I'm concerned, I'm not even talking about as APC or PDP. I'm talking about what should be obtainable in democracy. In democracy, the National Assembly should be independent. It should be able to do and do its program on its own without any cost to the secretary. They are a party man. They can have free cost to their party or to the secretary at five or consultation. Not for them to say, look, we need to get elected from the president. We need to get elected from the chairman of the party. That's what has been happening. I'm not escalating PDP in that regard too. While PDP was here, the same thing was happening. The president of the time will become the leader in the house. If you are not in line with that, there was a problem with the Senate assembly, simply because the president is going in tune with Dr. Bukalasaraki. That was why you saw all those prices at that time. Not because he was not performing, not because he was not doing his job, but because the president don't want him. They want different persons to become the president of the state of Nigeria. As far as I'm concerned, for other movements to grow, National Assembly, government should be able to operate on its own. Executive should be on their own. Why most executive want to influence whatever happens at National Assembly? If you have a good project, you want to bring to the policy or whatever you want to bring to National Assembly, not be them. Talk to them. They don't want to just say, want to put out just fast whatever you bring. Nobody will fight you. Everybody is fighting for Nigeria. The interests of those at National Assembly, what they are looking for is the Nigeria development. The executive are also looking for the same thing. So if you are bringing policies that will develop the country, they will pass it. They don't have to bribe them. You don't have to come and say, I need people who are my own. That means you are looking for those people that you call Roba Stam. They don't know what you are bringing, whether I write or not, they approve it. And that's what they are looking for. And that's why they are more concerned about having their own as leader at the end of their affairs of the National Assembly. It is not done. Before I let you go and bring something in to finalize this, so we have made mention of the fact that the APC has not necessarily ripened to a point where it can stamina it's two feet, being that there are too many things that make a hole and they yet to get to that hole. Can that center of the APC hold right now up until the end of this first tenor? Or do we see a deterioration from here on? I want to agree with him that the APC has not gotten its foot wet because I see today, you see that those factions are sitting, the APC faction, sorry, the ACM faction, the CPC faction, the last regime, that is the presidential majority, because of those in the cabinet are CPC Khakos. Today what we see today are those ACN, old ACN Khakos, those are the people that will populate the cabinet and around the president. So I want to agree with him that they are not standing well as it is today. They are just a couple, just come together to grab power and they will be able to grab the power. They are one, they are not united. So wait, finally, because we have just a minute to go. So if the National Working Committee continuously insists, because right here, the National Working Committee is saying, we didn't give approval, we haven't given any list, we are only hearing, what we're hearing now is just rumors and they're saying they're calling a meeting and then whatever comes out of that meeting is what will obviously be heard in our news on the newspapers as to who would be the principal officers. What should we be hoping for? Fingers crossed? Subway, can you hear me? Subway, can you hear me? Are you there? Yeah, I can hear you, can you hear me? Yes, in one quick minute, can you can you help us wrap up? Yeah, the National Working Committee should be very, very circumspect. We should be retrospective as to what had happened before in the past. Let's not understrike at one spot twice. Whether or not this issue can be resolved, but I agree very mentally with Tunji. You can't have the party to bear a roof. If anything goes wrong, they'll call the APC as a party. So everything right now falls to the party. So the party leadership, the president himself, must be involved in one person and assembly. Even in advanced democracy in the United States, why did the Democrats lose momentum as soon as they lost elections? In the mid-term elections? Why does it look like the Democrats may not get it right? Because they've lost the general control of the Congress. So the party must take interest in what goes on in government. The party is independent of the government and not responsible for the party who started a Lufa watch. Because Daniels would soon throw out the blame if the party failed. They must make it fair not to control and tell me what happened. Okay, gentlemen, we have to go. We have to go, unfortunately. That's our time. I want to say thank you, Tunji Abdulameed and Sawaya Eli. Our both lawyers, Tunji is a member of the People's Democratic Party, while Sawaya Eli is a member of the All Progressive Congress. Thank you so much, gentlemen, for speaking with us tonight. Thank you for having me. Thank you. All right. Well, we will take a break. When we come back, we'll talk about the general control of the sea. We've messed up and what the National Assembly's position is on the map to stay with us.