APC Rules Out Convention Without Buhari, Sets Up Committee On Restructuring

The All Progressive Congress (APC) may not be able to hold its constitutional mid-term National Convention until President Muhammadu Buhari returns back from his medical trip abroad.

The party has also set up a committee to review its position on the issue of restructuring that has been the order of the day.

Addressing newsmen on Wednesday at the party’s national secretariat after a closed door meeting between the party’s governors and the National Working Committee (NWC), Zamfara state governor Abdulaziz Yari, who spoke on behalf of the Progressive Governors said President Buhari “must be in attendance as a leader of the party and you know the situation of our president.

“We have been on this matter of convention, but you know that as a party, the president is the leader of this party, before getting to the convention, there are some processes, the national working committee (NWC), must agree on the time and at the same time we have to adopt what the report submitted by the NWC to the larger NEC members recommended.

“We have been fixing time but because of his illness, we are unable to hold the meeting. We have to put a kind of process in place, so that we can, at least, have a mid-term convention. It is not an elective convention. This congress that is going to commence on July 29 is for this convention, to fill some vacancies taken in the executive sides, those that died or went in for other appointment.

“This has nothing to do with PDP. PDP is a party on its own right and PDP was a ruling party. This convention has no connection with the PDP convention.

“We have agreed collectively that we are going to meet with acting president. The Acting president should understand that he is acting in capacity of the president of the country as well as the vice-president.

“Tomorrow he is going o perform the function of vice-president as chairman of NEC and the entire issue of security, economy, administration lies on him, and so we can are not take him as an easy man to deal with. It’s two in one. Therefore the committee is in place as we are talking today we reinstate that we going to create room for the issue of convention”, he said.

On restructuring, APC’s National Publicity Secretary Malam Bolaji Abdullahi said that the party “will articulate what APC means by restructuring.

“When we talk about a committee on restructuring, what we are talking about is a committee that will articulate what APC means by restructuring because we have realized that over a couple of days now or weeks, when people use the word restructuring, we don’t know if we are talking about the same thing and people have gone about saying APC promised restructuring.

“We really need to sit down to develop an understanding of what we mean by restructuring in our manifesto. So this committee that is setup will now be chaired by the governor of Kaduna state, Mallam Nasir el’Rufai is mainly to define what APC means by restructuring, so that every member will know exactly what we mean,” he added.