The All Progressives Congress, APC, has said it would not sanction its members involved in the budget-padding scandal rocking the House of Representatives. Dogara and Jibrin House Speaker, Yakubu Dogara and sacked chairman of Appropriation Committee in the House, Abdulmumuni Jibrin, have been locked in a battle of wits regarding allegations of padding.
However, speaking with journalists, yesterday, in Abuja, Deputy National Chairman (North) of the party, Senator Lawal Shuaibu, said APC could only sanction members who run foul of its constitution.
He said: “Article 7 subsection 5 of APC gives us the power to do certain things; you see what we are doing we are doing the right thing but only that we don’t want it in public gallery. “What is padding? The party does not sanction anybody on that. What concerns us is where any member contravenes the party constitution in his conduct. ‘’That is why I referred you to Article 7 subsection 5 of our party constitution. We are not a law enforcement organization and so we do not enforce law. ‘’We only ensure that the constitution is complied with; every member of the party is answerable to the party and answerable to its constitution. ‘’The two members that are subjected to this are elected or appointed members of the party including those that are holding public office. ‘’So, you expect the party to sit down and watch? No, we have to do our work. The issue of us sweeping anything under the carpet does not arise at all. But we do not do it in the market place, we do it in the party secretariat.” Our 12.7million members pay N100 each On funding of the party, he said the APC currently had a membership of over 12million who paid a due of N100 each to the party. “We have a credible source of funding.
Every member of APC in this country shall pay N100. So far, on our data base, we have 12.7million registered members, others are still waiting for us to just open our portal to do their membership registration.