With about five weeks to its planned National Convention, power blocs within the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) are pitted against one another in the scheme for slots in the party’s National Working Committee (NWC).

APC is billed to hold its convention on February 5, amid speculations that the Mai Mala Buni-led National Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee was working to seek a further extension of its tenure beyond next month.

But two of the legacy parties that dissolved into the APC in 2013 – Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) – are engaged in a cold war over the yet to be released zoning of NWC slots ahead of the convention, it was learnt.

As at last week, the proposed zoning arrangement initiated by the Buni-led Committee is as follows: President – (South), Vice President – (North), Senate President – (South), Deputy Senate President – (North), Speaker, House of Representatives – (North), Deputy Speaker – (South)

Others include the National Chairman – (North), National Secretary – (South), National Treasurer – (South), FinancialSecretary–(North), Legal Officer – (North), Welfare Officer – (South), Auditor – (North), National Youth Leader – (South), National Woman Leader – (South), Publicity Secretary – (South) and Persons With Disability PWD Leader – (South).

Buoyed by the above arrangement, the defunct ACN led by the APC National Leader, Ahmed Bola Tinubu, is scheming for one its own and one-time Lagos Information commissioner, Dele Alake, for the position of National Publicity Secretary. On its part, elements of the defunct pro-Buhari CPC have settled for its former spokesperson, Rotimi Fasakin, an immediate-past Executive Director at the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA).

A source familiar with the development confided in our correspondent that the Tinubu-led group had already secured the support of three South West governors, two North West governors as well as one North Central governor to push for Alake.

On the other hand, the defunct CPC, led by the trio of former Communications Minister, Adebayo Shittu, Fasakin and Engineer Ife Oyedele, is banking on the possible support of the Presidency through the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami (SAN).

The CPC group, it was learnt, has rejected an overture by the Tinubu group to go for the position of National Youth Leader.

“The battle line appears to have been drawn between the ACN and CPC elements. Ordinarily, the CPC has no roots in the southwest but because they are banking on the Presidency, they are already flexing muscles with the National Leader and his team. It is very annoying.

“If not that someone, particularly the Attorney General, is behind them, they won’t be showing this level of arrogance; and to even placate them, the national leader has conceded the position of National Youth Leader for them to fill, but they are insisting on the National Publicity Secretary position.

“In a matter of weeks, the situation will be clearer because the number of governors backing the National Leader is more than them,” the source said

(New Telegraph)

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