After days of vacillation of zoning of party offices, governors elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday finally agreed to zone the party’s national chairmanship position to the North Central ahead of the party’s national convention.
LEADERSHIP had reported yesterday that a meeting of the Progressive Governor’s Forum (PGF) convened on Tuesday to deliberate and arrive at a consensus after which they would communicate their decision on the knotty issue of consensus and zoning of party offices ended in deadlock.
As of Tuesday, the APC governors were said to be divided on whether to zone the national chairmanship position to either the North Central or North East.
But at their meeting which continued yesterday, the governors eventually settled for the North Central to produce the party’s national chairman.
A dependable source at the meeting of the governors which was also attended by some prominent party stakeholders told this paper that the progressive governors also zoned the party’s deputy national chairman and national secretary positions to the South.
The party leaders and governors from the South are expected to meet and take a stand on micro-zoning the deputy national chairman and national secretary positions, even as it was learnt that the South East and South South are favoured for these positions.
It was also gathered that the APC governors may have tipped one of the aspirants from the North Central, George Akume, a former governor of Benue State and current minister of Special Duties and Intergovernmental Affairs as the consensus candidate for national chairman position.
Our source who did not want his name in print because he was not authorised to speak on the outcome of the governors’ meeting said, “Yes, the governors have finally agreed on zoning. They resolved that the national chairman should go to the North Central, while the South should produce the deputy national chairman and the national secretary at the forthcoming national convention.
“It was even suggested that former governor of Benue State, George Akume, be picked as the consensus chairmanship candidate. For the deputy national chairman and national secretary, party leaders and governors from the South would have to meet and decide how to zone the positions among the zones.”
Aspirants Write PMB, Score Buni Committee High
Meanwhile, some APC aspirants have written President Muhammad Buhari, expressing confidence in the Governor Mai Mala Buni-led Caretaker Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC).This is coming on the heels of an open letter by the immediate past director general of the Progressive Governors’ Forum (PGF), Salihu Lukman, to the resident intimating Buhari of plans to sabotage the scheduled February 26 national convention of APC.
In his own letter, Lukman had referred to the caretaker committee as an “undertaker”, which was not doing enough to show that it was ready to conduct a free, fair and credible exercise.
But their open letter to President Buhari yesterday, aspirants vying for party offices in the forthcoming national convention under the aegis of the Forum of APC Aspirants for 2022 National Convention, said Lukman was engaging in some unholy activities, including “undermining the APC at the behest of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP)”.
The letter signed by a leading aspirant for the position of national youth leader, Maxwell Yakubu Gowon, on behalf of other aspirants stated that the Buni-led convention committee has done nothing to suggest that the aspirants would lose confidence in the process.
The letter reads in parts: “We find it ridiculous that the Caretaker
Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC), which under the
leadership of His Excellency Buni worked tirelessly to resolve some of the crisis in the party, was criminally maligned by Lukman.
“He accused the Committee of being high handed and yet expects the same Committee to disregard the views strongly expressed by the party’s stakeholders pertaining to conditions that must be met to have a successful convention.
“It is pertinent to state that the clamour from stakeholders have been majorly about redressing the damages done by the governors at the state chapters, which would make mockery of democracy and our great party if the mistake is made of progressing with the convention without first addressing them.
“The CECPC refusal to plunge the party further into crisis by
succumbing to the whims of the governors, for whom Lukman speaks, is the reason that the Committee and its leadership came under the kind of scathing attack contained in the open letter.”
