APC crisis: Oshiomhole opens up on fight with party members

The national chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Adams Oshiomhole, has reacted to the crisis rocking his party by stating that he has no fight with any party member.

The crisis which places Oshiomhole against Governor Godwin Obaseki has seen calls for his resignation growing louder.

While addressing former members of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, who decamped to the APC in Edo North, Oshiomhole revealed that his energy is only directed at fighting opposition parties.

He said: “The good thing about entertainment is that you choose the kind of entertainment you want but when it comes to rules, they are rigid and they are even enforceable so I think that sooner than later everybody in the APC family will see the futility of fighting one another.

“I never dissipated energy fighting within the party, I was never involved and I will never be involved in intra-party fighting, rather, I reserve my energy for the opposition and once they ring the bell for the contest, I deploy that reserve energy.

“I have not publicly or privately fought or abused any APC leader or member, any ACN leader or member, any AC leader or member.

“That does not mean that a couple of people didn’t do what I didn’t like but I also recognized that that is why we are humans and my responsibility as a leader is to identify those people, bring them, persuade them, caution them where necessary and guide them on how to go forward.”

He went on to cite a situation which saw cars get burnt at an airport to prevent an aircraft he was in from landing in Benin.

He added: “There must be disagreement, there must be contests, there must be legitimate divergent views about how to arrive at a destination.

“You know we had an incident like that in Benin when some people just chose to go and buy disused vehicles, put them on the road, burn the asphalt on airport road just because they didn’t want me to land in Benin; what was the purpose of my coming? To receive more people into our party.

“My language has always been our doors are open, let people who share our ideology come to join us when they do they enjoy all privileges. We have always been receiving people from PDP and my message is the same and it will remain the same whether I am chairman or not.”