The opposition Congress for Progressive Change will on Tuesday launch a fresh drive aimed at opening up the party and repositioning it for future electoral challenges with the inauguration of a so-called 'Renewal Committee,' officials said.Party leader and presidential candidate General Muhammadu Buhari is expected to lead the inauguration of the committee, which is to be headed by former FCT minister Nasir el-Rufai.Spokesman for the CPC Rotimi Fashakin confirmed to Daily Trust yesterday that the Renewal Committee, comprising about 200 members, will be launched on Tuesday. He said Gen. Buhari was in high spirits to see that the party looks inwards in order to chart a new course for the future.CPC has been bedevilled by internal recriminations since the April elections, when it failed to win most of the positions it expected to clinch easily.The launch of the Renewal Committee is coming as one of the major pillars of the party and long-time close political ally of Buhari, Malam Sule Yahya Hamma, pulled out from active participation in party affairs.Hamma has been the director general of the Buhari campaign team since 2003 when the general first run for president on the platform of the ANPP.A top party source told Daily Trust that Hamma's retreat may be connected to two issues which did not go down well with the politician. First, during a post-mortem of the April general elections he and the national secretary of the party Buba Galadima and some members of the National Working Committee of the CPC were blamed for the party's losses, particularly in Kano and Katsina following the not-so-good handling of the of the crisis that attended the primary elections there.Also, for quite some time, disenchanted party members had accused Hamma and Galadima, also a close ally of Buhari, of high handedness in handling issues in the Buhari team, but some observers said the leaders were only bent on ensuring that Buhari's image and ideology were not tainted.Hamma was also said to be concerned with happenings within the party which appear to erode the powers of some leaders of the party, particularly the appointment of el-Rufai as leader of the Renewal Committee.Few weeks ago, the CPC headquarters was noticed to be moving party property including furniture and office equipment out of the building which Hamma donated to the party to be used as presidential campaign office in Wuse district of Abuja.But Galadima and Fashakin in separate chats with our reporter denied reports that Hamma ejected the party from the building.They said Hamma, who is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the CPC, had only requested the party to avail him the building so that he could rent it out since campaigns were over and there was no serious party business in the premises.A disenchanted group in the party had also rejected the Renewal Committee saying it is the last step 'that will mortgage the life of the party in the hands of people who neither believe in its philosophy nor have the interest of the real members of the party at heart.'Spokesman for the group and former national publicity secretary of the party Dennis Aghanya said recently that 'Over a hundred persons of el-Rufai's core group and most of the identified persons who championed the incarceration of Buhari's followers while they were in the ANPP have been nominated into the committee nationwide.
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