APC to Rejig Plan for National Convention

Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has set in motion plans to reorder all activities leading to the next national convention of the party.

As a result of the party’s inability to hold its previously scheduled non-elective convention which has dragged on for so long, the leadership has decided to draw up fresh timetable for both state congresses and other programmes that were needed to be carried out before now.

THISDAY gathered that the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) at its meeting held last week has mandated the National Working Committee (NWC) to set up a committee that would draw a new programme of activities for the party.
A top member of the party said the new schedule of activities is being planned to align with the 2019 election timetable issued by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The tenure of the present NWC led by Chief John Odigie Oyegun is expected to end June 13 next year.
It was learnt that new arrangement would now push the non-elective national convention of the part forward till next early next year.

Speaking to journalists last weekend on what the party is doing about its mini convention, the APC’s National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, said though no date has been fixed for the non-elective convention, the party has asked the committee to go ahead and fix dates for all outstanding activities of the party before the main elective convention.

“Like I said after the NEC meeting because we were unable to hold the convention at the scheduled time and you are all aware that we earlier scheduled to hold, our mini convention in July but we were not able to do that for one reason or the other.

“That means that all the programmes that the party has would have to dovetail into one another. We have the party’s state congresses coming up, we have the mini convention and the elective convention coming up that must happen by the first half of next year.

“So it is important we synchronise all the activities and that is why a committee has been set up by the NEC just a couple of people being asked to sit together and harmonise all the various activities of the party starting with the mini convention and the various congresses across the states and local government areas which will now culminate with the national convention.

He said he does not know yet when the timetable will be out “but that the outcome of the committee’s assignment will be that we will now have a timetable that will synchronise win the INEC’s calendar showing the activities of the party beginning with state congresses and terminating with the national convention early next year.”