The structure of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is playing out on the party’s national leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, in strange ways. Most striking is that the APC structure assigns no formal status to the national leader that empowers or qualifies him to participate effectively in any organ of official decision making. Accordingly, the APC national leader, Asiwaju Tinubu, is technically shut out of APC National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting where crucial decisions are made, even as the organ holds its conflicts intervention meeting this Thursday.
The President, the Vice President, the leadership of the two chambers of the National Assembly, NWC members, and a few others, are the eligible party members to attend the APC NEC meeting. With the status of a national leader, Tinubu, is not assigned any portfolio that qualifies him to participate in the party’s NEC meeting.
The APC national leader may be going through seeming dilemma since the only structure under his subtle influence, the National Chairman of the party and the corresponding organ, APC National Working Committee (NWC) is also technically slipping off his control. All these are happening despite the huge investment Tinubu made in the negotiation for alliance, then the subsequent alignment and victory in the 2015 general elections.
Tinubu has always nominated who becomes the APC national chairman, every nominee has always been endorsed by President Muhammadu Buhari and other party leaders without controversies. The game appears to be changing with the current conflicts in the ruing party.
As APC holds its NEC meeting this Thursday, the reliable voices that could represent Tinubu or the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) legacy party in the APC are Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Rt. Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, and some NWC members still listening to the national leader and the suspended national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole.
Several observers are watching as events unfold in the ruling APC in the build up to 2023.