Fresh crisis seems to be looming in the All Progressives Congress (APC) over who replaces the suspended national chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, just as the disloyal members of the National Working Committee (NWC) have insisted that they have the consent of President Muhammadu Buhari to convene an emergency National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting.
The NWC members loyal to the embattled chairman had issued a statement countering the earlier one convening NEC meeting by the acting National Secretary, Hon. Victor Giadom.
According to them, the national chairman whose responsibility it is to call for the meeting did not authorise anybody neither did NWC meet to agree on the NEC meeting.
However, the deputy national chairman North, Senator Lawal Shuiabu, has said that the trio who signed the statement are not members of NWC except Babatunde Ogala, the national legal adviser.
Shuiabu insisted that Ogala is the only one among them that is an NWC member whose name is domiciled with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
According to him the APC national publicity secretary, Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu and the national secretary, Waziri Bulama were in admission of the suspended national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole
He maintained that “such persons cannot sign a letter and you expect it to have an effect.”
Meanwhile, another NWC member, who spoke in confidence, noted that the preparations for the emergency meeting had commenced at the national secretariat of the party.
According to him, the NWC wrote to the president, and he gave approval that NEC should be convened, faulting the position of his colleagues.
He argued that by the constitution of APC, the national secretary is in a position to issue notice of meeting to members in consultation with the national chairman or the majority of the NWC.
“In this situation, the chairman is suspended and the acting secretary, Victor Giadom consulted with us (NWC) at our last meeting,” the member noted.
He further argued that the six-member working committee that met last week is 1/3 of the present 15-member NWC, which is what the constitution of the party stipulates.
Similarly, the Forum of APC State Chairmen has emphatically resolved not to intervene in court orders restraining and restoring the national chairman of the party to his position.
The chairman of the forum and Borno State APC chairman, Ali Bukar Dalori and the publicity secretary doubling as Zamfara State APC chairman, Lawal Liman, said they will not intervene since the matter is a court issue.
The state party chairmen were previously at dagger-drawn over the repeated call for Oshiomhole to resign after he was suspended by his ward. Edo State APC last week asked Oshiomhole to resign after Abuja High Court asked him to stop parading himself as the party’s national chairman pending when the suit challenging his suspension would be determined.
Already, the party has started searching for a replacement for the national chairman.
While the governors are backing the former governor of Cross River State, Clement Ebri, the legislators are considering former Senate leader, Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba.
Ebri who was a governor in 1991 stepped down for Oshiomhole at the last convention, while Ndoma-Egba was the secretary of the convention.
However, some party members are also rooting for the acting national secretary to be considered for the position of acting national chairman and an indigene of South South region where the position is zoned to