Reports of parallel state congresses of the All Progressives Congress, APC, are likely to work against the party’s national convention scheduled for December.
The perception by aggrieved APC members – in their numbers in Delta, Osun, Akwa Ibom and Ekiti states – that the party’s national interim committee would recognize the state lists endorsed by incumbent governors or highest political office holders in non-APC states, is gearing to trigger a backlash.
These aggrieved members have decided to latch on the Buni albatross to secure their stakes in the party.
Some APC stakeholders in Ekiti State specifically referred to the Supreme Court judgment on the Ondo State governorship election, which they said declared the Mala Buni-led committee illegal.
At the scheduled Saturday party events in Ogun, Osun, Kwara, Lagos, Kano, and Akwa Ibom states, party chieftains conducted opposing congresses to elect state officials.
In Ekiti and Delta states, APC chieftains boycotted congresses supervised by the teams sent by the national interim committee.
The Ekiti APC Stakeholders Forum had in August, in a suit number FHC/AD/CS/21/2021 filed at the Federal High Court, Ekiti State Division, dragged the state APC to court, calling for outright annulment of the ward congresses, which they, among others, said did not hold and a declaration that the ward congresses were “unconstitutional, illegal, null and void.”
The Secretary to the forum, Femi Adeleye, in an interview, said the national caretaker committee was not recognized by law.
In Delta State, a group in the APC led by the Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo, SAN, who is also the chairman of the party’s leaders’ council, said it would proceed to the Court of Appeal to challenge the judgment a Federal High Court, Asaba.
Keyamo’s group had taken the Mala Buni-led caretaker committee to the Federal High Court over the conduct of the party’s congresses in the state.
It said it was not part of what it called the kangaroo congresses organized by a group loyal to the Deputy President of the Senate, Senator Omo-Agege, on Saturday.
Similar legal fireworks are being fired in Osun State, through the machinery of the Osun Progressives, a faction within Osun APC enjoying the backing of Interior Minister, Rauf Aregbesola.
In Akwa Ibom State, an APC chieftain and former military administrator of Ogun and Rivers states, Capt. Sam Ewang (retd.), leading the Elders Forum, warned that the party would die in the state if best decisions were not taken, taking a swipe at the control which the Saturday event granted the Niger Delta Minister and former governor of the state, Godswill Akpabio.
For Kwara State, the warring within the APC, is between a faction loyal to the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, and that of the state governor.
