A group – Buharists Hang Out (BHO) has asked the screening panel of the All Progressives Congress (APC) caretaker and extraordinary convention planning committee to disqualify Betta Edu, Cross River commissioner for health, from contesting as a National Woman Leader of the ruling party.
Gatekeepers News reports that in a petition signed by Uche Diala, BHO National Coordinator, the group said Edu’s character had been called to question after supporting the #EndSARS campaign in 2020.
The petition, dated March 21, 2022, and addressed to Aminu Masari, Chairman of the Screening Sub-Committee, Diala said this can be traced to a series of tweets she posted during this period.
This comes days after Edu was named by some APC members as the “consensus candidate” for the position of National Woman Leader.
According to the group, the tweets Edu posted during the #EndSARS protest contained fake and misleading information that contributed to the violence that occurred during the protests.
The petition read, “We hereby bring to the attention of your honourable committee an aspirant to the exalted and all important office of National Woman Leader of our dear party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), Dr Betta Edu, and to demonstrate the impropriety of her occupying such an office.
“Let us first state that we have no question regarding her eligibility to vie for any position in the party having decamped to the APC from the PDP alongside her Governor and employer, HE Governor Ben Ayade of Cross River state, a couple of months ago.
“However, the propriety of Dr Eta becoming the National Woman Leader of the APC has been called to serious question since a series of tweets she made on her personal Twitter handle during the #EndSARS protests in 2020 were made public.
“These tweets were made at the height of the #EndSARS protests which threatened to drive the nation to the brink due to the combination of a number of reasons, including hijack of the otherwise well supported protest against police brutality against Nigerians by hoodlums, fifth columnists and irresponsible opposition party members and fake news.
“The tweets by Dr Edu contained a number of fake, misleading and fabricated information, many of which spurred the ensuing violence during those protests and even brought international disrepute to the nation.”
The group further stressed that Edu neither recanted her views even after they had been debunked nor deleted the tweets until after she announced her intention to contest and was called out.
