APC meeting is for tenure elongation, concerned members allege

A pressure group in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), the Concerned APC Members, has alleged that the December 8 National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of the ruling party is a grand ploy to extend the tenure of the Governor Mai Mala Buni-led Caretaker/Extra-Ordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC) of the party.

The group also condemned the growing intolerance in the party, warning that the party was on the path of self-destruction, similar to what pushed the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) out of power in 2015.

The group, in a statement by its spokesperson, Abdullahi Dauda, in Abuja yesterday accused that the Caretaker Committee in concert with some state governors had perfected plans to secure tenure extension at the NEC meeting.

According to the statement, the group alleged that the tenure elongation plot was perfected at a meeting in the Asokoro lodge of one of the governors.

“We know the agenda of the NEC meeting is to extend the tenure of the caretaker committee. We are also aware of the meeting by some governors at Asokoro where it was agreed who would move the motion for the tenure extension for the caretaker committee,” the group disclosed.

Expressing concern at the level of impunity in the party, the group wondered why the Caretaker Committee, against widespread opposition to the conduct of membership registration, will still want to go ahead with the exercise.

“We are aware of the plan to postpone our convention and do a fresh registration, The questions we are asking are: What happened to the party register? Has the party been operating without one? How did we come about the 16 million members we told Nigerians in 2019? Is this registration not another plan to remove people who those controlling the party now don’t like?”

The group further said that aside from using the registration exercise to edge out all “perceived enemies”, it alleged that the Caretaker Committee is mulling the plan of dissolving all the party leaderships from to the ward to the state levels despite the tenure of these leaders that is due to expire by 2022.

“We have it on good authority that the Caretaker Committee will, after the registration and regularization exercise, dissolve all the party structures across the states and conduct new party congresses irrespective of the fact that the tenures of those state structures from ward to state will not expire until 2022 in some states. The planned dissolution is to allow the “cabal” from having control of the statutory delegates that will attend and vote at the convention.”

The group then observed that the party has derailed from its formative norm of ensuring change in the way politics is played in the country, insisting that the group’s demand transparency in party activities and the call for the release of a timetable for the national convention were patriotic calls to save the party from destruction.

Warning the party leadership, the group said, “We are all witnesses to the way the former ruling party, PDP, was chased out of power in 2015. Their party leaders were no longer listening to the people they were leading. They failed to respect agreements and expelled those who disagreed with them. As a party of change, we cannot behave like that,” the statement concluded.