•Adamu rallies state chairmen to stave off crisis
Amidst subsisting cold war among members of the All Progressives Congress, (APC) National Working Committee (NWC), a meeting of its National Executive Committee (NEC) will hold tomorrow in Abuja.
Venue of the meeting is the Congress Hall of the Transcorp Hilton.
According to sources, a gathering of another statutory organ of the party, the National Caucus will precede the NEC meeting.
The session of the statutory organ will hold today at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa.
The NEC meeting will be the first to be convened since President Bola Tinubu assumed office and to be attended by him in the last eight years.
This is because he was not a member of NEC during the administration of the immediate past president, Muhammadu Buhari.
It was gathered that on the agenda of the meeting is a presentation of a formal report on the performance of the party in the last general election.
The Senator Abdullahi Adamu-led NWC will also present an audit report of the financial status of the party before a larger gathering of president, vice-president, all APC governors, chairmen and secretaries of state chapters of the party and other statutory members of the NEC.
Multiple sources, however, told the Nigerian Tribune that the audit report of the APC’s financial account was a subject of discord between Senator Adamu and other national officers of the party.
“At the last meeting of NWC where he presented the audit report, most members of the organ refused to sign it.
“They expressed their disaffection that the national chairman was trying to railroad them to sign a document that they weren’t privy to and hadn’t read the content.
“They demanded for copies of the audit report for them to internalise it before they could append their signatures,” one of the sources stated.
A national vice-chairman, who spoke with the Nigerian Tribune in confidence, affirmed that there was rancour over the APC audit report.
The national vice-chairman, North-East, Salihu Mustapha, according to a source at the meeting, had told Senator Adamu that he acted in error, saying the NEC was the organ empowered to appoint an external auditor to look into the account of the NWC.
Article 13.3 A (xiv,xv, xvi) reads in part: ”The National Executive Committee of the party shall be the principal executive body of the party and shall perform the following functions:
xiv: Approve the national budget of the Party;
“Receive quarterly financial report from the National Working Committee on income and expenditure of the party;
“Appoint external auditor.”
Nigerian Tribune gathered that the former governor of Nasarawa State might have lost the confidence of certain members of his NWC who accused him last week of antagonising Tinubu over the choice of principal and presiding officers of the 10th National Assembly.
To stave off crisis occasioned by a divided NWC, the APC national chairman, according to the sources, has fixed a meeting for today with chairmen and secretaries of state chapters ahead of the NEC meeting for tomorrow (Tuesday).
