President Bola Tinubu on Thursday led Vice-President Kashim Shettima, Senate President Godswill Akpabio, House Speaker Tajudeen Abbas, APC governors and past party leaders into the 14th meeting of the All Progressives Congress National Executive Committee.
At Thursday’s emergency gathering, being held at the State House Conference Centre, Abuja, the party will swear in a new substantive national chairman.
The meeting began at about 02:15 pm after the Deputy Speaker of the House, Benjamin Kalu, said the opening prayers.
It comes weeks after the former APC National Chairman, Dr Abdullahi Ganduje, resigned citing health reasons.
Imo State Governor Hope Uzodimma, who heads the Progressive Governors’ Forum, led 24 APC governors to the meeting.
According to the meeting agenda spotted by our correspondent, participants will listen to remarks by the Acting National Chairman, Bukar Dalori, acceptance speech by the new National Chairman and President Tinubu.
Participants are also paying tribute to the immediate past President Muhammadu Buhari, who died on July 13 at a London Clinic.
After a minute of silence in Buhari’s honour, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, who served as Vice President, led a session of tribute.
He said the party will remember Buhari as an elected leader who led the APC to victory in the 2015 general elections.
Ganduje’s resignation as chairman last month created a vacancy that re-ignited agitation inside the party, especially from the North-Central zone, which lost the seat when Senator Abdullahi Adamu (from Nasarawa) resigned in July 2023, and Ganduje (North-West) was picked by NEC the following month.
Party stalwarts from the zone argue that, under the APC’s internal power-sharing formula, the chairmanship should revert to them.
Under the APC constitution, the NEC is the party’s highest decision-making body between national conventions.
It typically includes: the President and Vice-President (if they are party members), all state governors on the APC platform, principal officers of the National Assembly from the party, members of the NWC, serving and former national officers, state party chairmen and secretaries, and leaders of recognised party organs (women, youth, persons with disabilities, etc.).
NEC can also fill national vacancies, approve budgets, alter zoning arrangements, and, when necessary, delegate its powers to the NWC — a step it famously took during the COVID-19 era to allow the Adams Oshiomhole-led NWC to act with wider latitude before that leadership imploded in 2020.
Formed in 2013 from the merger of the ACN, CPC, ANPP, a faction of APGA and the “new PDP,” the APC used its NEC to validate the processes that produced Muhammadu Buhari as presidential candidate in 2014, Bola Tinubu in 2022, and to ratify the creation of presidential campaign councils in both election cycles.
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