Battle of the Chieftains: Atiku and Tinubu in Race to Emerge the New APC BoT Chairman

 

Ahead of today’s meeting of the Board of Trustees (BoT), it has been learnt that some members of the BoT of the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) are already forming queues behind former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar and the National Leader of the party, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

 

According to sources who disclosed to Daily Trust on Sunday, the BoT meeting, scheduled to hold at the APC National Secretariat in Abuja, would be used to elect both the chairman and secretary of the Board, which is an advisory body of elders and leaders considered as the conscience of the party.

 

Former National Chairman of the Progressives Peoples Alliance (PPA), Chief Sam Nkire, who is a leader of the APC in Abia State, has already declared his interest to become the secretary of the party’s BoT.

 

The latest development is an indication that the first interim National Chairman of the party, Chief Bisi Akande, may no longer be in the APC BoT chairmanship contest.

 

Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, the APC National Chairman, confirmed today’s meeting last Monday after resuming from a 10-day working break, adding that after the emergence of the BoT chairman, a meeting of the party’s national caucus will follow on Tuesday, March 22, 2016.

 

He said the meeting of the APC National Executive Committee (NEC), which is the party’s highest decision making organ, will hold on Thursday, March 24, 2016.

 

It was also learnt that the need to fill vacant positions in the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) would be ratified at the NEC meeting.

 

The APC national chairman, who spoke with journalists at the party’s National Secretariat in Abuja, had said that all arrangements had been concluded to conduct congresses through which a substantive national publicity secretary to succeed Alhaji Lai Mohammed would emerge.