By Jude Opara, Abuja

Ahead of the February 26 National Convention of the All Progressives Congress (APC), a presidential aspirant on the party’s platform, Alhaji Adamu Garba, has advised the party leadership to put its house in order before the forthcoming convention, warning that the ruling party could explode if some contentious issues are not addressed.

Garba insisted that the party should not go into the national convention unless some contestations are resolved.

As part of the panacea, he said the party should go for a consensus ahead of the National Convention.

Adamu who spoke to newsmen on Thursday in Abuja said he wants to be President to fill the gaps which President Muhammadu Buhari has not been able to do achieve because of age and the people around him.

While reacting on why he initially called for the postponement of February 26 national convention, Garba said: “Seriously, if we do not put our house in order, and pay serious attention to this contesting interests, we might end up having implosion. There are other people waiting for this implosion. I am sure you are monitoring what is happening in the party. There is this emergence of mega party and it is deliberate this time around. It is a combination of strong interest. They are interested in breaking both the APC and PDP to emerge and win elections. This is ongoing.

“The strongest broker to that success is the success of APC. That means the merger party will do everything possible to see APC break so that they can gain from it. So, we should not allow them. Even if it warrant giving extral time, even if it means giving more months for the CECPC to regularise the fake membership within the party, we will be able to do that. If we fail in this convention, it will be difficult to win power.

“You cannot go to war field without an effective Generals who has the support of the majority of his lieutenants. If the lieutenants break themselves from within, and house divided against itself cannot stand. And that is exactly what we are trying to avoid.”

On what he will do differently from what President  Buhari has done, the APC chieftain said: “I think what we intend to do is to consolidate on the successes of President Muhammadu Buhari. He has done his best giving the number of challenges he met and especially on the issue of insecurity, even though we may want to condemn.

“We have so many issues in the North-west, and we hope to have peace in the zone too as we move forward. I believe the president became a prison of the Nigerian system because it is design in such a way that no matter how great or excellent you become, if you get to the centre especially the presidency without extensive plan to fundamentally transform the country, from its bases, roots  arrangement, it might not be easy.

“So that gap, I believe, is one the president is unable to achieve maybe due to age and some constraints around the people surrounding him. But ths is the area we intend to be able to achieve when we get there.”

On why he wanted the National Convention shifted, the presidential aspirant said: “What I wanted to achieve is a peaceful and united party as we confront the 2023 general elections.

“We have a very serious internal wrangling in the party. You know, we talk about camps; ANPP, ACN, CPC, you have APGA. And the nPDP. And lots of democratic parties that have joined to form APC. If you go back to the states, there are issues between the state governors existing and the state legislators. And again, you have the issues between sitting governors and former. There are a lot of confusions.

“So, when you have this kind of confused arrangements, if you pay attention to only reconciling the governors,  you are only addressing one part of the issues. There are so many parts of the problems. And this is the kind of situation we have found ourselves in 2013, 2014 that PDP crashed and APC became net gainer of it.

“So, we should avoid this kind of situation. And we now have a caretaker Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee under Mai Mala Buni that was instituted by the President himself and off course court of law validated that it is legal. And this guys are doing everything possible to stabilize the party. And so far, we have gain so much members into the party that we have ever gotten. And we have achieved so much stability that we can dream of.

“So, you have to find way to give them a level playing field. And this interest needs to be attended to for proper reconciliation. And since we are now approaching the convention ground, these warring parties with all their arsenals, then if we are able to achieve the unity fine, we can go to the convention. But if we are not able let us have extral opportunity for the main time for this CECPC to succeed in bringing and mainstreaming the majority stakeholders of the party before we go public show.

“I don’t believe as a party, we should go into convention with contestations. Of course, it is democratic to contest outside, but inside the family affair, we have to be able to sit together and agree that this is our leader. We all trust him. So, going into the convention ground with contestation is not solid for us. We have to wait and reconcile, filter our candidates across board, ensure unity list and once we go there we anoint them. It is a family affair.”