Trouble looms ahead of Tuesday’s National Executive Committee meeting of the All Progressives Congress, APC, following allegation that the party’s National Chairman, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, is shielding the audit report of the party’s account from the National Working Committee.
The development is coming one week after the National Secretary of the party, Iyiola Omisore, announced that the APC will host its long-awaited National Caucus and National Executive Committee meetings slated for July 10 and 11, respectively.
While the caucus meeting is scheduled to hold today (Monday) at the Presidential Villa by 6pm, the NEC meeting is slated for 10am on Tuesday at Transcorp Hilton.
However, the agenda of the meetings was missing from the notice, which was also advertised on social media and major newspapers across the country.
Meanwhile multiple sources at the secretariat told our correspondent that Adamu and some NWC members may be heading on a collision course if the APC chairman fails to grant them access to the audited report of the party’s account before attempting to present it at the NEC meeting.
In an exclusive interview with The PUNCH, one of the aggrieved committee members, who spoke in confidence, expressed concern that despite the media trial and his face-off with the Vice Chairman for North-West, Salihu Lukman, Adamu is still running a one-man show at the secretariat.
“Many people were laughing when Lukman accused him of running the party like a garrison commander. Will it interest you to know that the audit report has not been submitted to the NWC members (for scrutiny)? The question is, how do you then present such a report to the NEC meeting?
“I am sure even Adamu knows there will problem if he doesn’t give access to the report before he presents it,” he said.
On why Lukman appears to be the only one challenging the national chairman, the APC chieftain described the situation as unfortunate.
“As you can see, even Lukman has slowed down. Will he kill himself? He has done more than enough by highlighting all the issues plaguing the party,” the source said.
In a related event, Adamu will on Monday meet with all Chairmen of APC State chapters at the party’s national secretariat in Abuja by 1pm.
It was gathered that the former Nasarawa governor seeks to use the avenue to seek their cooperation and update the state leaders on agenda of both the National Caucus and NEC meetings.
A party chieftain, who confirmed the meeting, also told our reporter in confidence that the meeting will afford the national chairman the rare opportunity to unveil names of party members chosen from various states to serve in the statutory and ad hoc committees of the party before they are tabled before NEC for approval on Tuesday.
“We are aware that both Adamu and Omisore met with President Bola Tinubu on this and even secured his approval. Hopefully, we should get the memo of the agenda by tomorrow morning.
“But I want to believe the priority of NEC, which is the superior organ of the party, will be on the audit of party account, funding, revenues generated from sale of nomination forms to aspirants, cost of the secretariat rehabilitation, which is still unknown to us, and other activities in the last one year. These will be the major thrust of the NEC meeting.”
When contacted, APC National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka, who was out of the country for his daughter’s graduation at the University College, London, said no agenda had been released by the party.
He said, “We don’t have an agenda yet. You know NEC is not a public gathering. It is a controlled meeting. So, we don’t have an agenda that is available to the public.”
In the same vein, Deputy National Organising Secretary of the party, Nze Duru, dismissed speculation that the President may miss the caucus meeting due to his trip to Guinea-Bissau for the 63rd Ordinary Session of Economic Community of West African States.
“We initially thought President Tinubu won’t return on time for Tuesday’s NEC after he travelled to Guinea Bissau for ECOWAS meeting. But we understand he is coming back tomorrow (Monday) and could still make the national caucus meeting, which will hold at the State House in the evening,” Duru said.
