Deadlock: Tenure elongation for Oyegun, others splits APC Governors

Governors elected under the platform of the governing All Progressives Congress (APC), were on Tuesday divided over the tenure elongation of the John Odigie-Oyegun led executive and other party officials.

The governors refused to speak with State House correspondents after meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday.

The meeting, which held inside the Council Chamber of the Presidential Villa to resolve the impasse, lasted for over one hour.

At the end of the meeting, both the chairman of APC Governors Forum, Rochas Okorocha of Imo State, and the chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum, Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara State, declined comments.

Governors Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna and Simon Lalong of Plateau simply said they (governors) have agreed “not to speak to the media.”

HEATED MEETING

A source, however, told PREMIUM TIMES that the governors had a heated debate over the tenure elongation of party officials.

“I am not sure what happened inside the Chamber could be called a real meeting, they were simply fighting,” the source, who declined to be named because he is not authorised to speak to the media said.

As reported by PREMIUM TIMES earlier, the meeting discussed the decision of President Buhari who asked the party to rescind its earlier decision to extend the tenure of party officials. Mr Buhari said the tenure extension was undemocratic, violates the constitution and may attract needless legal tussles.

The president on March 27 shocked members of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of his party when he called for the cancellation of the tenure extension for party officials.

The APC had earlier at its NEC meeting on February 28 extended the tenure of members of National Working Committee (NWC) led by Mr Odigie-Oyegun by one year.

The decision did not go down well with a national leader of the party, Bola Tinubu, who had been in conflict with the national chairman of the party.

Speaking shortly before the commencement of NEC meeting, Mr. Buhari told a packed hall at the APC national secretariat to consider cancelling the tenure extension decision because “it is against the party constitution and the Nigerian constitution.”

Rattled, Mr Buhari’s entreaties led to the formation of a ten-member committee by the NEC to look at the proposal by the president.

The committee has Mr Lalong of Plateau State as chairman.

Mr Buhari’s position clearly polarised APC governors which led to Tuesday’s meeting.

Going by the mood of the governors as they filed out of the Villa, it was apparent that no common ground has been forged on the contentious matter.