The absence of President Muhammadu Buhari in the country has put a wedge on the plans by the All Progressives Congress (APC) to hold its long-overdue mid-term national convention.
The Governor of Plateau State, Simon Lalong, who confirmed this wednesday while addressing journalists after the meeting of the National Working Committee (NWC) and governors, said President Buhari was part of the process to fix the convention date before his sudden departure to the United Kingdom.
“We want to conduct a convention which is constitutional and the leader of the party must also be at the convention, so at the time we agreed to meet with Mr. President on the issue, unfortunately the president had to travel out. Since the approach was first to the president, we all agreed to meet with the acting president still on the same process to agree on a date for the convention,” he said.
Lalong however, said the APC governors have resolved to meet with the Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, to agree on a fresh date to hold the convention.
“What we agreed was since we have an acting president, the team which was supposed to meet with the president with the suggested date, we now agreed that the same process should start again with the acting president,” he said.
Speaking on the party’s achievement in the last two years, Lalong said the meeting with the party’s leadership reviewed performances in the states under its control, adding that the ruling party has been able to overcome initial challenges.
Regarding the crisis in some of the state chapters of the party, the Plateau State governor said most of the issues had been resolved.
“The purpose of this meeting was to review our party activities and to talk about preparations for second year anniversary. The meeting took a total review of the activities so far and the performance of our party in various states where we have APC governments and came to the conclusion that so far so good. we have done very well.
“At that time, there were issues like that but as you can see from this meeting, everyone is smiling. the party is smiling. those challenges have been taken over by events that is why I am telling you that we are taking things serious now and we are meeting on a monthly basis now. issues like that are no longer issues,” he said.
The National Chairman of APC, Chief John Oyegun, also echoed the position of the governors that the party and its governments have done well in that two years.
“In fact, it is sad that we are full of issues at the central level which the social media have tended to concentrate on and that all the good works that our governors are doing tend to be downplayed.
“I have a wonderful experience in Zamfara State where I had distinct privilege of inaugurating two magnificent water projects with facilities to reticulate and redistribute water to over 6,000 kilometres of pipelines. I said I am specially happy because its effects on the lives of people is obvious.
“It made me to see that our governors are in fact embarking on projects that touch the ordinary man and woman and made them feel that they have benefited from the APC government.
Oyegun was particularly full of praises for the Zamfara State Governor, Abdulaziz Yari, for the great inroads he made in executing development projects that is impacting on the lives of the people.
He said as part of the anniversary programme, the party has decided to embark on showcasing projects in various APC states.
Governors of Plateau, Niger, Kebbi, Benue, Jigawa, Edo, Zamfara, Kastina, Bauchi States attended the meeting while deputy governors of Kwara, Kogi, Lagos, Ogun, Osun, Nasarawa, Imo State stood in for their state chief executives.
