The National Working Committee (NWC) of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is scheduled for next Tuesday. The meeting is coming amid the tension within the rank and file over the management of the party’s affairs. Three years after the APC held its inaugural national convention, it is yet to hold another one; it has no Board of Trustees (BoT) and all its internal party processes have virtually broken down. As it gets ready for the NWC meeting to prepare for its mid-term national convention, Deputy Political Editor RAYMOND MORDI examines the challenges facing the party. 

THE All Progressives Congress (APC) may have boxed itself into a corner, by not doing things differently; even though it rode to power on the mantra of change. After postponing the National Working Committee (NWC) meeting several times, the party appears determined to hold it next week Tuesday, to work out the modalities for the party’s mid-term, non-elective national convention. The party had continued to draw flaks from some party chieftains following its inability to hold the convention in April as initially scheduled, but party leaders had attributed the delay to the health challenge of President Muhammadu Buhari, a situation that saw him out of the country for a period of over three months in the last instance.

The last convention was held in October 2014, when Buhari emerged as the party’s flag bearer in the last general elections. Going by the APC constitution, the convention was supposed to hold every two years, but the party leadership has not been comfortable with the idea of holding the bi-annual event before now, because of the crisis rocking the party at different levels.

After running the successful campaign that saw it displacing the former ruling party – a development which is unprecedented in Nigeria’s political history – the coalition practically collapsed, with various groups pulling the party in different directions. The crisis has not only pitched members against each other, but also gradually derailing the vision of the party before it came into power.

The challenge before the Chief John Odigie-Oyegun-led National Executive Committee (NEC) therefore is that of managing the internal agitations and clash of interests among various political tendencies and gladiators during next week’s meeting; at least, to achieve its purpose of galvanizing its members to tackle the problems facing it, as the country gradually approaches the period of electioneering campaign for the next general elections in 2019.

In other words, the meeting must be held in such a manner to avoid an implosion of the party, as preparations for the 2019 general elections gradually gets underway. Observers believe the Odigie-Oyegun-led leadership is faced with a herculean task in this regard, because there are numerous challenges confronting the party at this point in time.

Some of the challenges are: Odigie-Oyegun’s leadership style; President Buhari’s perceived aloofness to party affairs; the crisis rocking the party in different state chapters; lack of funds to run its affairs; the unresolved Executive/National Assembly rift; lack of harmony and cohesion; and President Buhari’s undeclared second term bid.