The leadership crisis rocking the All Progressives Congress (APC) appears to be creeping abroad as the party’s South Africa Chapter insists that its chairman, Dr Olusola Taiye Abe, is dead.

APC South Africa, in a statement jointly signed by Chuks Okoye, Chairman, Board of Trustees, and its Public Relations Officer, Olusegun Badmus, described a statement denying the death of its chairman as a “misrepresentation”.

“Before the demise of Dr Abe, he successfully led our organization rising from the position of vice chairman to the Late Chairman, Festus Ogbeide, to become the substantive chairman in 2017.

“Official records abound in South Africa and at the APC national headquarters in Abuja to validate this.

“To also buttress this truism, President Muhammadu Buhari indeed sent his condolence message through his media aide, Femi Adesina, commiserating with APCSA on the demise of its chapter chairman,” the statement said.

A group within APC South Africa had on Thursday said that the late Dr Abe was not its chairman.

Spokesman for the group, Sani David, had in a statement, expressed the party’s condolences on the demise of the APCSA leader but said the deceased was not its chairman.

‘The bonafide Chairman of the APC South Africa is Bola Babarinde, who is still very much alive, hale and hearty,” Sani had said in the statement.

However, APC South Africa said that “Sanni David, Bola Babarinde and others, had voluntarily relinquished their membership and had ceased to be members of our party having officially decamped from the APC to the Labour party in 2016.”

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that President Muhammadu Buhari had on Wednesday expressed sadness over the death of the Chairman, APC, South Africa Chapter, Dr Taiye Abe. He was 65.

In his condolence message signed by Femi Adesina, Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Buhari sympathized with the family, friends and colleagues of the deceased, urging them to take heart, and praying that God will comfort them at this time of sorrow.

President Buhari recalled many meetings with the departed on visits to South Africa, and remarked that he was a man with unmistakable love for Nigeria, and deep commitment to the ideals of the All Progressives Congress.

“Dr Abe looked forward to a Nigeria that would take its rightful place among the comity of nations, and passionately believed in a resurgent country we could all be proud of.

“We will not relent in working towards that goal,” the President had said in his condolence message.

He urged members of the APC in South Africa to continue the good work pioneered by Dr Abe, particularly in being worthy ambassadors of the party, and their fatherland. (NAN)