Former Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, John Odigie-Oyegun, has asked the party to make self-saving moves before it is too late for it.
He said in a statement on Saturday that the party had deviated from the path that gave it victory in 2015.
Besides, obviously referring to the crisis occasioned by the primary election in Edo State, where he is against suspended Chairman Adams Oshiohmole, he said the APC had become a threat to democracy.
The statement reads: “Our own political party, the APC, is fast becoming the single most dangerous threat to the legacy of our government and our president.
“In the last few months we have watched how the party has brazenly subverted its own principles of internal democracy and flagrant violation of every rule of decent political engagement in a manner that makes everyone associated with its promise of change liable to be accused of either hypocrisy or apostasy.
“We must therefore remember that our victory in the 2015 Presidential elections and the peaceful transfer of power that followed was a major testament of progress in our nation’s journey towards real democracy.
“This unprecedented democratic achievement has since inspired progressive forces all over Africa and has become a standard by which democracy is measured in the rest of the continent.
“Unfortunately, it appears that while other countries around us have marched ahead in the democratic journey, we have largely regressed.
“There is a most urgent need for the party NEC to meet and institute for the party a caretaker committee (even if we have to invoke the doctrine of necessity), whose main responsibility will be to arrange for a special national convention.”
The crisis in Edo State has led to the departure of Governor Godwin Obaseki, who has now joined the Peoples Democratic Party.
His deputy, Phillip Shaibu and other top politicians left with the governor whose return to office Oshiomhole opposes and who was disqualified from the primary.
