Ahead of the National Convention of the All Progressives Congress (APC), slated for June 13 and 14 in Abuja, there are indications that the 16 governors on the platform of the party are planning to hijack its leadership structure from the known national leaders of the party.
Daily Sun gathered from a reliable source that the governors appear to be disposed to the system of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), where the governors are the leaders of the party in their respective states.
Their plan, Daily Sun checks revealed, include sponsoring a Christian, particularly from the South-South zone of the country, to become the substantive national chairman of the party.
The governors were also said to be determined to erase the toga of Islamic party that the opposition has hung on the APC. Our investigation further revealed that former Governor of Edo State, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, has been penciled down for the job.
A source close to one of the governors from the South-West confided in Daily Sun that “they want to tailor the party towards assuming the proper structure of a national party in the real sense of it and not the type that would look like a personal property of some individuals.”
A chieftain of the party from Oyo State, in a chat with Daily Sun in Ibadan, said that “next month’s National Convention of the party has the potential of making or marring the party.”
He cautioned that “if the build-up to the convention, vis a vis the anger that emanated from the party’s congresses across the country, is not expertly handled, it can jeopardise the party’s chances of survival towards the election year of 2015.”
If the governors have their way eventually, an analyst, who did not want his name in print, reasoned that the Muslim/Muslim ticket being proposed in some quarters would be checkmated. He said that “judicious distribution of key positions across religious/ethnic lines would go a long way to sustain the goodwill the party has garnered”.