APC leadership crisis takes new twist as governors threaten to dump party

Thirteen governors elected on the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) are set on a collision course with their remaining counterparts in the party as they insist that Yobe State governor, Mai Mala Buni, must retain his position as chairman of the party’s Caretaker Extraordinary Con­vention Planning Committee (CECPC).

The governors are reportedly upset with the way their colleagues in the “cabal” are belittling them in the decision-making process of the party having first lost out on the fixing of a date for the party’s national convention and are now facing further humiliation with the attempted imposition of Governor Abubakar Sani Bello of Niger State, as the CECPC chairman.

Another option on the table, which is being seriously weighed by the governors is teaming up with the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as three of them defected to the APC from PDP.

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One of the governors from the North-East geopolitical zone protested that “the cabal formed by our other colleagues has suffocated the life out of APC. The party has been reduced to the equivalent of a drug-dealing gang where decisions are now based on who can manipulate President Muhammadu Buhari better.

“Even if APC governors were constituted into a kind of Electoral College to make decisions for the party, which is not the case, there is no way seven is greater than thirteen. When you have only seven governors forcing their decision on thirteen governors of equal jurisdiction then you know there is a problem.

“So, what we are saying is that we are ready for them. We are not saying that Mai Mala Buni should not stop being the chairman of CECPC, but our point is that there must be due process. There is a proper way to go about it, not some charac­ter sneaking to the president to snitch in the dark of the night and then come out throwing the president’s name around.

“If they want us to fall out with them as fellow APC governors then we are ready. But this thing about being dictatorial must stop. It is a democracy, and the APC must run as a democracy. Or else there is no example we are showing any­body as leaders”, the aggrieved governor who spoke anony­mously said.