-Meeting to prepare ground for NEC – Abdullahi
The National Working Committee of the All Progressives Congress appears to be currently in dilemma over the recent appointment of former Lagos state Governor, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu by President Muhammadu Buhari, to reconcile some aggrieved party members.
To this end, the party’s national executive has tactically relocated its weekly meeting to Asokoro, residence of its national chairman.
Blueprint gathered that while some members of the NWC had expressed support for Tinubu, others are also ‘aggrieved’ that the president could make such appointment without recourse to the NWC.
Findings, however, revealed that the weekly NWC meeting, which usually holds at the party’s NWC Room on the Third Floor every Monday, was taken to the Asokoro residence of Chief Oyegun, the party’s national chairman.
A top source at the APC secretariat also told our correspondent that since Tinubu’s appointment was announced by the Presidency last week, the Oyegun-led NWC had been thrown into panic.
When our correspondent visited the national secretariat between 12pm and 4pm yesterday, none of the exco members showed up at the party house.
The source said: “We don’t know why NWC members decided to hold meeting outside the party secretariat today, but it is obvious that this Bola Tinubu’s reconciliation panel is a major headache to some of them.”
It was also learnt that the aggrieved NWC members might be making moves to lobby some APC governors with backing for Oyegun, to crumble the assignment which Tinubu had already kick-started.
One of the NWC members and the National Vice Chairman of APC in the South-south, Hilliard Eta, in an interview with Blueprint, had described Tinubu’s appointment by the president as “fantastic.”
Eta believes that it required experience of a national figure within the party like the former Lagos state governor, to mend several broken fences as the party “gets ready for the 2019 general elections.”
“You see, President Buhari and Asiwaju Tinubu have been the unifying factors in APC since the merger of our party came to be. So, the right person has been chosen to do the job.”
But, the party’s Deputy Publicity Secretary, Comrade Timi Frank, who is also an aggrieved party, had, in a statement on Sunday, expressed reservations over the new task given to Tinubu, saying “Asiwaju Tinubu cannot do magic because it’s already late.”
Frank wondered how the national leader “will succeed in reconciling the likes Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and Governor Umar Ganduje in Kano, Senator Shehu Sani and Governor Nasir El-Rufai in Kaduna, Speaker Yakubu Dogara and Governor Abubakar in Bauchi, Rotimi Amaechi and Senator Magnus Abe in Rivers state, Senator Dino Melaye and Governor Yahaya Bello in Kogi state, former governor of Edo state, Adams Oshiomhole and Chief Oyegun in Edo, crises in Ondo, Lagos, Gombe, Bayelsa, Cross River, Osun, Ekiti, Jigawa, Niger, Delta states, and so on.”
Spokesman explains
But in a reaction to reporters’ inquiries after the meeting yesterday, APC National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, said, “our (Executive) meeting was basically to prepare grounds for our NEC meeting.
“We looked at the constitutional amendment, the Restructuring Committee report and other activities ahead of our national convention in June. That’s all.”
