On the same day that President Muhammadu Buhari reinstated the Mai Mala Buni-led leadership of the All Progressives Congress, APC, the leadership proceeded subsequently to cancel the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting scheduled for Thursday.
The cancellation of the NEC meeting was contained in a statement signed by the Secretary of the party’s Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC), Senator John James Akpanudoedehe.
Read the statement: “As directed by the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning (CECPC) and Governor of Yobe State, H.E. Mai Mala Buni, a purported emergency meeting of the Party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) slated for Thursday, March 26, 2022 is hereby cancelled.”
The terse statement dud not give reasons for the cancellation.
However, feelers from the party indicated that the meeting was illegal as it was not properly convened by the right authorities circumscribed in the extant law and INEC code on political parties’ administration.
INEC had written the party to advert its attention to the fact that its letter notifying it of its March 17, 2022 NEC meeting was not signed by the chairman and secretary.
It also advised the party to comply with the legal requirement to give the Commission twenty-one days’ notification to the conduct of its national convention.
THE CONCLAVE learnt that these obvious legal lapses and the imperativeness to save the party from heading irredeemably into a bind that were responsible for the presidential intervention that restored the CECPC under Buni’s chairmanship.
President Buhari made a clear reference in his letter to the Chairman of Northern APC Governors’ Forum, Governir Atiku Bagudu of Kebbi State to possibility of the party running foul of INEC’s guidelines and thus having all its activities cancelled by the Commission.
In the letter dated March 16, 2022, the President had reined in the APC governors and directed them to back the Buni leadership of the party to conduct the March 26 national convention.
There are feelers that Buni who is expected back before the weekend from London where he met with President Buhari, may still summon a NEC meeting for a day before the national convention. The NEC meeting, when convened, will be virtual.
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