Disquiet in APC over consensus candidate; party shifts convention again
All is not well within the All Progressives Congress, APC, over a favoured and anointed candidate of President Muhammadu Buhari who is said to have a preferred candidate known only to the top cats in the party.
Buhari’s candidate, according to sources, is a southerner but this has not gone down well with some presidential contenders and some other members of the party.
Several efforts have been made to calm frayed nerves especially those whom the party hierarchy feared may dump the party if their candidate was edged out of the race.
The position of President Buhari was said to be the reason for the postponement of the convention to allow for more horse-trading to convince some aspirants to step down, but not by coercion.
To this end the party has postponed its special convention for presidential primary for the 2023 general elections from May 29 to June 6 hours after INEC extended the time frame for primaries to be concluded.
“At the end, the APC will settle for a consensus candidate. Pushing it towards the end of the deadline is to foreclose the chances of aggrieved candidates joining other parties as flagbearers,” a top APC source said.
National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Felix Morka, announced the postponement in a statement hours after the Independent National Electoral Commission extended the deadline for party’s to conduct their primaries.
The statement read: “Following the Independent National Electoral Commission’s extension of deadline for the submission of list of candidates by political parties, the All Progressives Congress (APC) hereby postpones its Special Convention for Presidential Primary from Sunday, 29th-Monday, 30th of May, 2020, to Monday, 6th-Wednesday, 8th of June, 2022.”