The South-East APC Integrity Group is concern that lopsidedness in appointments by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) government or the political party itself is unhealthy for national unity.

A statement signed by its convener, Dr. Chinedu Jideofo-Ogbuagu, the APC group said:

“Congratulations to the APC national leadership for coming up with the idea of APC National Women Conference, scheduled to hold on 16th-17th January 2022 at the International Conference Centre, Abuja.

“The conference will certainly go a long way in endearing APC to existing and new female members of our party across Nigeria.

“But APC programmes such as this one must not be lopsided in terms of appointments into its organising committees/subcommittees. Such appointments must be evenly distributed according to geopolitical zones, to give every geopolitical zone a sense of belonging and present APC as a truly national party.

“APC must not be seen as a party of some geopolitical zones and tokenism to others. No zone(s) must be made to feel that it is more or less important to another. All 6 geopolitical zones must be equal stakeholders in APC, as this will also justify its “progressive” tag.

“But lopsidedness and unequal treatment is what appointments into the various organising committees of the APC National Women Conference have committed.

“We counted the cast of the Conference committee and they are 213 in number. Distributed equally among the 6 geopolitical zones, each zone should be represented by 35.5 APC women. Is that the case? The answer is “No”.

“The lopsidedness here reminds us of inauguration of 10-member national committee for membership registration and revalidation without a single South-Easterner among them.

“We immediately complained then and proposed increase of that committee to 12 members with 2 South-Easterners included (12 divided by 6 = 2). We must take this opportunity to commend APC national leadership for accepting our proposal then and acting on it immediately, by appointing and inaugurating 2 South-Easterners to join the 10 members from other zones already inaugurated.

“We hope our proposal this time will also be accepted and acted upon immediately. Not only membership of each of the 7 subcommittees plus the Conference Secretariat should be balanced, officials of the subcommittees should be balanced too.

“To make the cast of the Conference divisible by 6, the total number should be increased by 3 to 216, with each geopolitical zone being represented by 36 women.

“And we demand that at least one South-Easterner be among the Conference Secretariat.

“We thank all concerned in anticipation of the right thing being done in this and every other case of our party requiring equal geopolitical representation. We have been working very hard to grow APC in the South-East since 2015 and need our geopolitical zone to be treated equally by the party for South-Easterners to see APC as our party too.

“Lopsided appointments present APC as “their” party, and we don’t want that to continue, certainly not since January 2020 that we have been pushing for emergence of President of Nigeria of South-East extraction on APC platform in 2023”, Dr. Chinedu Jideofo-Ogbuagu,
Convener, South-East APC Integrity Group – operator of South-East APC Presidency Project 2023 concluded.