The newspaper review for Monday, July 23, focusses on moves by the All Progressives Congress (APC) to stop members of the Reformed-All Progressives Congress (R-APC) from defecting.
The presidency and the new national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, are making efforts to stop members of the Reformed-All Progressives Congress (R-APC) from defecting.
Vanguard reports that Oshiomhole has been holding meetings with leaders of the R-APC in their homes in Abuja to dissuade them from leaving the ruling party.
Vanguard newspaper for Monday, July 23, photo credit: snapshot from NAIJ.com
A source close to Oshiomhole told the newspaper that the national chairman of the party has been able to win back the support of some federal legislators with the promise of reconciling them with their governors, who many of the legislators were peeved with.
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“With the moves of Adams, some of them are having a rethink, and I can tell you that some of them have become confused,” the source said.
Meanwhile, the R-APC has rebuffed efforts by President Muhammadu Buhari to stop their defection from the ruling APC.
The Punch reports that the national publicity secretary, of the faction, Kassim Afegbua, in a statement on Sunday, July 22, said it was too late for President Buhari to prevent their defection.
The Punch newspaper for Monday, July 23, photo credit: snapshot from NAIJ.com
The R-APC in a statement said despite the initial arrogance of the APC leader, they had been pleading with members of the faction not to defect.
“We, members of the R-APC, find it very amusing that those who boasted that they won’t lose sleep over our altruistic action, have been hopping from door to door pleading with our members not to leave by dangling juicy carrots and promising them heaven and earth,” the faction said.
“Such level of double standard is the reason why the R-APC was birthed in the first place because the leadership is not one that keeps promises and it’s the reason why no one should take the APC seriously.”
The R-APC said the president had promised mouth-watering offers to its members in a bid to stop them from leaving the ruling party.
Still on politics, APC has reacted to the threat by the PDP to boycott the 2019 general elections, saying the opposition party was being hunted by its past.
The Nation reports that the APC chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, stated that the ruling party was not intimidated by any threat of the PDP or any other party.
The Nation newspaper for Monday, July 23, photo credit: snapshot from NAIJ.com
Oshiomhole said the APC could defeat the PDP while it held power in 2015, and that it can repeat the feat now that PDP is out of office and divided.
He said: “I think they are hunted by their own ghost and this is because they had perpetrated a do-or-die politics and they are on records that election matters are do-or-die affairs. One of their old men was recorded as saying that they perfected the language of rigging them out, ‘let them go to court."
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“Now rigging machines have been dismantled and their problem is how they can survive without it. The glue that held them together, which was cheap money from treasury, again that has been cut off and what they already have, like a typical village sheep, they may chewing it all day all night. Now after three and half years, it almost seems that they have finished all; they have taken and now they are worried.”
To other news, the conduct of the 2019 general elections could be jeopardized by a renewed face-off between President Muhammadu Buhari and the National Assembly over who calls the shot on budget matters.
Guardian reports that Senator Rafiu Ibrahim, a member of the Senate appropriation committee and chairman of its committee on banking, insurance and other financial Institutions, queried the president over the issue.
The Guardian newspaper for Monday, July 23, photo credit: snapshot from NAIJ.com
He insisted that the executive cannot, at this time, ask that money for key capital projects be converted for elections.
"That is not planning. Since we held the last poll, the next election time had been fixed. Since we did the last election, we already knew when we must do the next election, as the Electoral Act stipulates. We already knew that a new government would be inaugurated on May 29, 2019," he said.
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Source: Naija.ng