Again, APC shifts convention to 2018

     The much anticipated mid-term national convention of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) will not hold until the first quarter of 2018, the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Malam Bolaji Abdullahi, said yesterday in Abuja.

    Abdullahi, in an interview with journalists, however said the meetings of the party’s National Caucus and National Executive Committee (NEC) would hold as planned next week. “I can tell you that the convention is not going to take place until the first quarter of next year. There will not be any implosion or explosion because we are not going to invite Boko Haram to the convention.  “Let me emphasise that we have not decided on the date of the convention because we have to hold NEC meeting that will agree on a date and agenda for the convention,” the APC spokesperson said.

  Though no reason was given for this resolution, Daily Trust gathered that the decision might not be unconnected to the party’s funding challenge and the fear that the convention might be used to effect an “unexpected leadership change” in the ruling party.  Pundits say that if the NEC meeting acceded to the plan to hold convention during the first quarter of 2018, the Chief John Odigie-Oyegun-led APC National Working Committee (NWC) would be conducting an elective convention that would usher in a new set of party executives since their tenure is expected to end by June next year.  It would be recalled that the ruling APC had been postponing the conduct of its convention since the March 24, 2016 NEC meeting, where it was resolved that the party’s constitution should be amended.

  

    Speaking on the purported plan by some APC governors to remove Chief Odigie-Oyegun, Abdullahi said, “When you talk of 17 governors planning to impeach our national chairman, it is just a newspaper report people are reacting to. We have come out to dismiss such report telling Nigerians that we are not aware of the 17 governors referred to.   “We made it clear that there would not have been anything like that because they would have expressed such displeasure whether against the party or chairman in particular during the series of meetings we have had with them.  “I was opportuned to attend all the meetings and there has never been any time any of them stood up to say that they are not happy with him,” he said. 

DAILYTRUST