Pending a change of plans, the All Progressives Congress (APC) will hold its National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting next month.
LEADERSHIP gathered from a party source that the nod for the meeting is against the backdrop of President Bola Tinubu’s availability between the first week of September and the 19 of the same month.
It was further gathered that the NEC meeting will set the stage for the conduct of a non-elective national convention which will be held before the end of this year.
Next month’s NEC meeting will be the first this year. It will also be the first under the leadership of former Kano State governor Dr Abdullahi Ganduje as national chairman.
Ganduje’s assumption of office last year has been dogged by opposition from North Central party leaders who argue that he is occupying the zone slot as against the zoning arrangement.
An APC chairmanship aspirant in 2022, Muhammad Etsu, had filed a legal injunction to stop Ganduje from parading himself as national chairman.
He had argued for the national chairmanship seat to return to the North Central zone as zoned ahead of the 2022 elective national convention.
In the build-up to the 2022 national convention, the APC had zoned the position to the North Central which saw Senator Abdullahi Adamu emerge as national chairman.
He however resigned in 2023 paving the way for Ganduje, who hails from North West, to become chairman.
Another party source, told LEADERSHIP that the NEC meeting would be part of measures by the president to formalise a process of stabilising the party in light of evolving political undercurrents in the North.
The source said, as much as informal engagements are “ongoing to assuage, reconcile and firm the party base”, the NEC meeting and subsequent national convention would be necessary to formalise certain intra-party issues and show the party is still intact.
Besides the agitation by the North Central, some influential APC leaders like, former Kaduna Governor Nasir El-Rufai, have been alienated from the party, amid grumblings from other party leaders from the geopolitical that they are being shut out of the political equation.