Chief John Oyegun, APC National Chairman
Ahead of the proposed meeting of the interim National Executive Committee of the Coalition of APC Support Groups scheduled for Saturday, 13 May, PM EXPRESS can report that a looming crisis that may tear the coalition apart, which may extend to the All Progressive Congress as a whole, is in the offing.
The APC Support Group is an amalgamation of all registered and certified support groups that worked for the success of APC in the 2015 general election.
PM EXPRESS exclusively gathered that national executive of APC mandated by the Interim National Chairman of the support group, Ambassador Lawan Munir to democratically co-opt five members from each geo-political zone of the country to make up the national executive of the support group. The members must however be chairmen from registered and accredited groups that made up the coalition.
Going by the precedents in the political history of the country, each zone would submit the names of their members, who must have been selected through a democratic process to the national office.
A guideline to conduct election into offices in zones was released by the office of the national organizing secretary of the APC and signed by Mr. Chris Owoisho. Based on this, each zone conducted its respective election to various posts allocated to it. The election was held in North Central, Southwest, South South and South East except North West and North East.
The expectation of the stakeholders was that five members from each zone would be picked from people that won election at the zonal levels.
The contrary is now the case as the process was hijacked by some elements in the interim executives of the coalition.
It was alleged that the northern elements in the coalition of APC Support Group have perfected plans to shortchange their counterparts from the southern part of the country particularly the southwest. Sources reliably told PM EXPRESS that some positions which supposed to be spread across the zones were arbitrarily allocated to the North.
The National Chairman, National Organising Secretary, National Financial Secretary, National Youth Leader, National Welfare Secretary, National Women Leader and leader of people living with disability are now from the northern part of the country.
The allocation of the posts in the coalition was said to be contrary to the norms in the APC, the larger party. The situation has been degenerated to the level that two positions were given to a state in a zone where other states within the zone has none.
The selection of the five members from the zones has been turned to highest bidders, while some people who had been picked were not even chairmen of any of the groups within the coalition.
Sources told PM EXPRESS that the end game of these elements is to use the platform of the coalition for political gains, lobbying for appointments, securing contracts from government. Most groups within the coalition are one man show without any structures to justify their membership of the coalition. Some of them could not even point to any work done for the success of APC in the last general election.
It was gathered that the coalition has been turned to ethnic agenda with the southwest at the receiving end. It was an open secret that the southwest delivered the success of the party in the election that produced Presidency of Muhammadu Buhari and Prof. Yemi Osinbajo. The idea of coalition originally came from a support group which was southwest based, but was hijacked by the northern element when it comes to the composition of national officers through their cronies in the APC.
The element within the coalition, it was gathered, has an agenda ahead of the 2019 election to use the coalition against the APC structures and leadership in the southwest by using people from the southwest who are not supposed to be members of the national executive.
PM EXPRESS gathered that some stakeholders of the coalition from the southwest have vowed to resist the attempt to derail from the original agenda of setting up of the coalition with the promise that they won’t allow the mischievous elements to succeed in their plans.
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The APC as a party in Lagos is a big dis saponin tent to its followers. This became the general feeling of supporters of the party after dinner stake holders meeting held at Acme head quarters where the party leader Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu announced that 18 former charmer should get automatic ticket of return including a dead one of them, Hon Durosim.i.