By Tolu Soetan
Atiku Abubakar, a former vice-president of Nigeria and chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, has denied being summoned or queried by his party.
There were rumours that Atiku, who visited the national secretariat on Monday, July 18 to meet with John Oyegun, APC’s national chairman and other national officers of the party was summoned to the venue following his comments on the need to restructure the country while attending the launch of a book “We Are All Biafrans,” written by Chido Onumah. At the event which held in Abuja, Atiku was quoted as saying: “We must refrain from assuming that anyone calling for restructuring of our federation is working for the breakup of our country…we must renegotiate our union in order to make it stronger. Greater autonomy, power and resources for states and local authorities will give the federating units greater freedom and flexibility to address local issues, priorities and peculiarities.”
Some analysts feel that Atiku’s parley with Oyegun was as a result of his comments at the book launch but the Adamawa politician, in a statement by his media team, said that wasn’t the case. “I was neither summoned nor queried by the party on any issue as being speculated. Rather, my visit was at my own behest. As a party chieftain, I owe it a duty to my party to appraise challenges within the structures of the party and also proffer suggestions on how to manage those challenges. I urge you all to discountenance any malicious insinuations about my visit to the party secretariat,”Atiku said.
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