Full text of President Muhammadu Buhari’s address to members of the ruling All Progressives Congress on Tuesday, December 8, 2020. 

It’s an honour once again to be part of this meeting with party members. 

We should remind ourselves about the challenges facing us culminating in our decision to set up a 13-member caretaker extraordinary convention planning committee, on the 25th of June 2020, with a specific mandate of restoring peace in the party, conducting a bottom up registration, organising a national convention and mobilising the party for coming elections.

The chairman of Caretaker Committee, His Excellency, Mai Mala Buni, has presented a progress report to this meeting which should guide our deliberations and strengthen capacity as leaders of the party in our moves towards resolving all outstanding issues.

I have received periodic briefings from the caretaker extraordinary convention planning committee, as well as other leaders of the party.

I am convinced that in the last five months, since the appointment of the caretaker committee the initiatives taken have brought remarkably new atmosphere of hope in the party.

Healthy debates are now taking place and the potential for organs of the party to affirm majority positions as the decision of the party  is now possible. 

What is required now is for all of us as leaders of the party to maintain discipline and ensure that this new momentum is protected, sustained and the decisions of party organs are respected by every member.

Despite the challenge to restore peace in the party and the series of elections at hand, the fact that we have gained more members and that we are not losing members to the opposition under the present interim leadership, indicates improvement of the party. 

In fact, we have begun to win back our members who left us and other notable political leaders are being attracted to our party. 

In this regard, I hereby acknowledge the return of many party stalwarts and their supporters, particularly His Excellency, David Umahi, Governor of Ebonyi. This confirms we are indeed making progress as a party of choice for Nigerians, as we move towards the resolution of our leadership challenges.

I want to appeal to all our party members and leaders at all levels, to try and make the required sacrifices so that we are able to collectively restore our progressive and democratic political party, which can nurture and give expression to our collection dream of building a strong, United and developed Nigeria.

May I use this opportunity to remind all of us of the need to recreate our negotiation secret of 2012, 2013 under our legacy parties. 
What guided our success to achieve the merger that produced the APC was the respect we were able to have for each other. 

In those times, decisions reached at both formal and informal consultations were respected with trusted initiatives taken and believed that they were needed to produce the required political platform that could guarantee electoral victory. Everyone of us as leaders ensured that those decisions were respected. 

I have through consultations of the caretaker committee and other leaders of the party, agree that our challenges in the party require that we take steps to rebuild the party from wards to national levels.

The initiative to carry out membership registration revalidation is therefore a necessary, membership registration revalidation will lay the foundation for reorganizing our membership from ward to local government m, state and national levels.

The responsibility of our party’s NEC at this meeting is to adopt and dispassionately consider all proposals submitted by the caretaker committee and grant all the necessary approvals requested to rebuild the party. 

To this end, I will be moving some resolutions for our consideration and approval.

I believe that as leaders, our shared vision is to ensure that we are able to produce leaders that will not inherit the problems that led to the decision to desolve our last national working committee.

There should be no debate about the fact that we all want to have a United leadership for our party, the APC at all levels.  

We need such leaders to be able to manage big challenges that always come with elections. 

Once again I welcome you to this meeting with hope that we will move and defend the overriding interest of the party and our people.