•Senator Ali Ndume
Almost three weeks after instigating his removal as Senate Chief Whip and Vice Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation, the All Progress Congress National Working Committee held a closed-door session with the Senator representing Borno South, Ali Ndume.
Checks revealed that the National Chairman of the Party, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, initiated the peace meeting with Senator Ndume, reports Nigerian Tribune.
The meeting with the federal lawmaker, who was removed on July 17 as principal officer of the Senate and Vice Chairman of the Appropriation Committee by the APC Senate Caucus at the formal request of the APC NWC, was held behind closed doors with Ganduje and his team and lasted for a few hours.
Ganduje, in the letter he signed, which was read on the floor of the Red Chamber by the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, last July, accused Ndume of a scathing indictment of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, which he noted was unbecoming of a person of Ndume’s status in the ruling party.
Speaking with journalists after the meeting, the APC National Chairman dropped the hint that, having apologised to the party, he would write the APC Caucus to reconsider its removal of Ndume as Chief Whip and Vice Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation. He said: “We are quite satisfied with his apology. As he said, we invited him and you know the party is the father of everybody. As a party, we are free to invite legislators, we are free to invite members of the executive, and we are even free to invite all the appointed party members in the government. So, that is why we decided to come; it is a family issue, and we need to resolve it, and we are writing to the National Assembly to convey what has transpired between Senator Ndume and the party. You know he apologised to the party and we conveyed the same issue to the National Assembly. We hope they can review their position.”
Senator Ndume, who admitted to an error of judgement in his open criticism of Tinubu’s administration without recourse to the party leadership, however, insisted that his condemnation of Tinubu’s administration’s economic policies was his honest position, based on patriotism.
He said: “Yesterday, I was invited by the party, and here I am to discuss family matters. Actually, the national chairman is not just a national chairman to me, but a father. With what has happened, which you are all aware of, it is not surprising that I am invited to hear my own side, and we had family discussions. I actually accepted the mistake of not talking to the party as a last point, and I promised the party that all my observations as a senior member of the family should have terminated or ended with the party. That is something that, moving forward, I will adhere to. Whatever I said or whatever I did was out of patriotism, and those issues may be strong, but they are true. However, I should have talked to the party at the last bus stop.”
He also maintained that he has no intention of seeking another political platform outside the APC.
“My membership, I have not been expelled. Even the party did not say we don’t want you here, because he is my father, the party is my father. The only thing the party said is that look, if you don’t want this house, you can go to any house. Where will I go? This is my house. The president and the Senate have nothing to do with this, the president did not take offence, I didn’t insult the president, I didn’t say anything against the party.”
