APC Convention in February shaky as some Govs push for postponement till June
– Admin.
Barring all unforseen circumstances , All Progressives Congress , APC, the ruling party in Nigeria is suppose to fix a date for the party’s national elective convention as February approaches. That was the expectation of party faithfuls across Nigeria from the Convention Extraordinary Planning Committee of the party , the ad hoc structure set up to manage the affairs of the party under the Chairmanship of Gov. Mai Mala Buni.
The opposition Peoples Democratic Party , PDP, has held a seamless and hitch free National Convention where Dr. Iyorchia Ayu had emerged as the National Chairman of the party and pundits expect no less from the ruling party.
However, the February Convention of APC appears shaky and may not even hold as expected if vested interests within the party have their ways. It is observed that some powerful caucus within the ruling party may prefer a postponement of the convention far beyond February for the party to have the required time to clear all the veiled animosity across party structure that could impugn the success of the convention should it hold in February. Among the members of the caucus baying for postponement are State Executives , whose words count and whose opinion are considered weighty in the APC structure.
Their projection is that it is very important to ensure blocks forming APC do not go to the convention without having resolved backlogs of distrust that have bubbled to the surface in the past few months particularly as some states had yet to resolve issues that emanated from their respective state congresses. However, as apt as this sounds, in a year preceding the General election, the ruling party cannot afford to dilly- dally about a party’s national event of the prominence of the convention of the party.
Report now has it that even among the APC Governors , the development has thrown up two groups : Pro February Convention Governors and Pro APC Convention Postponement Governors.
To douse this tension , an emergency Progressive Governors Forum (PGF) comprising all APC Governors has been fixed for Sunday ( that is tomorrow 16th January) in Abuja.
The agenda of the meeting according to sources were not stated but sources confirmed that most definitely , the APC Governors will be meeting in Abuja on Sunday. No doubt, the tenure of the CECPC leadership structure of the APC will be the major item to deliberate on particularly as President Muhammadu Buhari himself had in the time past demanded a specific convention timetable from the Mai Mala Buni led CECPC.
The APC Governors as vital stakeholders of the party will be expected to give a direction and suggest noble idea on how to meander through the crisis that a likely postponement may prop up in the party, should there be one.
Considering issues differently, it may be counter productive for APC to consider a postponement of their convention beyond February as the party still has to resolve the knotty issue of the APC Presidential primaries, which heavy approach is as important as the convention.
The All Progressives Congress will need all the required diplomatic panache to waddle through the subtle challenge of the need to organize a successful convention and promptly too as all eyes are on them just the same way eyes were on PDP ahead of its primaries which eventually ended in an anticlimax after the party’s consensus agenda trounced other convoluted schemes on the day of convention.
As matters stand now, if at all the APC Convention holds in February, Consensus candidacy may still hold sway as underhand efforts are in the offing to push the Party’s Presidential candidate to the South. Be it as may, APC Governors Forum holds all the aces on the way forward in the Nigeria’s ruling party.
