APC Maintains Its Decision On Tenure Extension

Voice of Nigeria: Nigeria’s governing party, the All Progressives Congress APC has maintained its decision to elongate the tenure of its National Working Committee for a year while a technical committee looks into the situation.

The APC National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Bolaji Abdullahi stated this while briefing journalists after the party’s National Executive Committee Meeting at the APC National Secretariat Abuja.

This decision to maintain status quo on elongation of executives’ tenure was arrived at in spite of President Muhammadu Buhari’s assertion at the beginning of the meeting that elongation of tenure was unconstitutional.

“The NEC decided to set up a small team to advise the party on the way forward on this matter, at the moment, there is no decision taken. So the decision of NEC still stands from the last meeting”.

 Meanwhile, Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari said:“What is expected of us is to conduct fresh elections once the tenure of the current executives approaches its end, a caretaker committee cannot remedy the situation and it cannot variably act in place of elected officials. Furthermore I think if we deviate from the constitution we might be endangering the fortune of our party”.

Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi state further explained why the NEC maintained its earlier decision of tenure extension.

“What we sort to cure was to ensure that in view of certain crisis within the rank and file of the party and considering the time limit between now and when we’ll be facing the general election, it is expedient that we ask the current NWC and the current executive committees at all levels to continue to act in that capacity for a period of twelve months. That does not negate any provisions of our party or even the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria “.

The APC National Publicity Secretary said the NEC has also decided to set up a technical committee consisting of some legislators, the executives and the party to look at the proposals from the APC committee on True Federalism and Restructuring “to enable the president transmit it to the National Assembly”

There were also various debates on the issue on the APC constitutional amendments.

After the debates the NEC arrived at the decision to incorporate the observations made at the NEC meeting into the APC Constitution.