The Spokesman of the Presidential Campaign Council, Festus Keyamo, says the long-awaited manifesto of the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, has been surgically reviewed and approved by APC stakeholders.
Keyamo made the disclosure while addressing journalists immediately after Wednesday’s tripartite meeting between Tinubu, the Progressive Governors Forum and the Presidential Campaign Council and members of the APC National Working Committee.
The closed-door meeting, which was held for about three hours at Transcorp Hilton in Abuja, witnessed a heavy flow of traffic and security presence.
In attendance were Abdullahi Adamu-led APC NWC; Tinubu’s running mate, Senator Kashim Shettima; Chairman of the Progressive Governors Forum, Atiku Bagudu; Deputy Director General of the PCC, Adams Oshimhole; Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje; Plateau State Governor, Simon Lalong and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila among others.
Although the agenda of the meeting was not disclosed, according to The PUNCH a source said the candidate has decided to take the bull by the horn by inviting all stakeholders of his campaign including those who were aggrieved over the exclusion of their nominees from the initial 422-man list of the council to a political roundtable.
“Although the meeting was supposed to take two hours from the look of things, it may extend to four. But in the end, some things are certain. They will conclude on the composition of the final council list as well as a date for the campaign kick-off,” the source said.
But rising from the meeting, Keyamo told journalists that the stakeholders deliberated far beyond what people may have earlier speculated.
He said, “What we did today was to review the draft of our manifesto. Our candidate is not one who operates on his own. He tries to carry everybody along. And so he presented a draft of the manifesto to all the stakeholders to look at it today.
“Guess what? Almost all the stakeholders gave that draft more than 90 per cent pass.”
When asked if a date has been picked for Tinubu and the party to unveil the manifesto, Keyamo noted that they were not under any pressure to do that.
This is even as the Minister of State for Labour and Employment disclosed that an adhoc committee has been set up to trim the policy document into a simple abridge version for the average Nigerian to comprehend.
“We are not going to take the thunder away from our candidate. He (Tinubu) is going to present Nigerians on a particular day and occasion. That is what we want to do.
“But I can tell you that a small committee has been set up again. Their function is to reduce (volume of the) document to major highlights so that we can sell the message to even the market woman and street trader in the most simple language. We don’t want to present to Nigerians in a very complicated manner that they can’t understand in simple terms what we want to do for Nigerians.
Wednesday’s tripartite meeting came one week after Deputy Director of APC Presidential Campaign Council, Adams Oshiomhole, and eight governors met with Adamu for a crucial meeting at the party secretariat over the contentious 422-man campaign list of the PCC.
But Adamu claimed the meeting was held to essentially interact with the APC governors who he described as custodians of the party in their various states.
When asked again why the APC stakeholders and the candidate are yet to reach a decision on an appropriate date for PCC inauguration and campaign kick-off, keyamo admitted that a definite date has not been chosen.
According to him, a political campaign has to involve a conscious and calculative strategy to ensure no stone is left unturned.
He said, “You know some parts of the structure of our campaign involve a presidential diary. So I have said it before that our campaign is not like those who operate kick-and-start with their small vehicles.
“Our campaign is like maneuvering a 50-tonne trailer into the highway. Once we hit the highway, people will know. The president is the chairman of our campaign council and we are going to take his diary into consideration in picking the date. But we have all virtually agreed that we are going to hit the street very soon.
“We have agreed on the region to begin the campaign but I am not going to say that now. We have also addressed all the basic issues because we want to carry the leaders of the party along.
“For now, no date has been chosen (for PCC inauguration). But we will announce that sooner than you think. But I can tell you we have exhausted everything that needed to be discussed today.”