The National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, has said the need to avoid crisis ahead of the 2019 general elections is the reason the elective convention of the party has been shifted.
Chief Odigie-Oyegun, in a brief interactive session with journalists yesterday in his office, said the decision taken was not new to the APC in view of similar actions on Ekiti and Osun states in 2014.
He said it was not possible to have unanimity of opinion on the action of the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) to extend the tenure of the APC officials across all levels by one year.
There were insinuations that some aggrieved members of the APC were planning to drag the party to court for the extension of tenure for the Oyegun-led National Working Committee (NWC) of the party.
Odigie-Oyegun, who was asked to comment on the division over the issue, said, “I don’t want to talk on this sensitive political issue, suffice it to say that whatever is happening naturally will be contrary viewed.
“So, it will be so difficult if you come out with total, 100 per cent unanimity. But I think the reason of not wanting to hold some of these elective congresses this year is very clear. We have such a mighty work to do this one year and each one has potential of causing crisis. It has always been anyway that once there is an election, it always creates its own issues.
“We are going to have first set of party elections, second set of elections of governmental aspirants, other Houses of Assembly, House of Representatives, Senate, governorship and so on.
“So, We just felt we could defer some of these issues or the party felt some of these challenges could be deferred for one year for serious tasks before us, which is the national elections, and people gave the good examples of Ekiti and Osun where because of this same problem, elections were due in those two states, the filling of party offices had to be deferred,” he said.
