APGA faces marginalization in APC

All Progressives Congress (APC), may have sidelined the South-East political zone following the recent alleged arrangement in the sharing of plum positions in the yet to be registered political party.

 Few days ago, the leadership of the so-called mega- party coming together as All Progressives Congress (APC), agreed on the formula to be adopted in sharing key offices in the higher chain of command of the party.

Our source in Lagos said with the ongoing plan on sharing formula in preparation for registration with Independent Electoral Commission, INEC, APGA and south-East group in the APC family has already been marginalized.

 The parties that have agreed to come together under one big family are the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), that predominantly control the South-West political Zone, the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), originally had its base in the North-East, and the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), with its base in North-West; and a faction of All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), a South-East based political party led by Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha.

APC is intended to have representation of seven persons in the party's National Working Committee (NWC) and the National Executive Committee (NEC).

According to the planned sharing of the big and influential positions, it was learnt that the position of National Chairman has been zoned to the ACN. The National Secretary was allocated to CPC. The National Treasurer was given to the ANPP and National Organising Secretary was left for the fraction of APGA in the APC.

The report said among the persons that will be nominated by the concerned parties, 11 members will control the APC National Working Committee.

A competent source alleged that because of the crises in the APGA, her own representatives would not join the APC as a political party but on individual basis,

It was gathered that APC had submitted the list that contained the names of the three National Chairmen, National Secretaries (3) and National Treasurers (3) of the merging parties because they are the signatories to the accounts of each of the parties, this excludes APGA officials.

These are officials are the authorized persons that can sign legal documents representing their parties, but are also going to be signatories to register the new party because they are legal signatories. With this arrangement, none of APGA officials are included in the signatories to sign any document on behalf of their party, APGA or the yet to be registered APC.

According to source close to APC officials, the party would soon announce the names of the interim officials that would anchor the APC ship with INEC and its eventual take off. Investigation revealed that the party is still consulting on the Board of Trustees (BoT)    chairmanship position of the APC.

It would be recalled that last week, Chief Tom Ikimi, spokesperson for the merger committee of the three political parties spoke after a meeting in Abuja and said the national chairmen, secretaries and treasurers of the three parties  (excluding APGA), had submitted their letters of intent to merge to INEC.

The leadership of the three political parties, which want to infuse into one big party, announced that they had finally approached INEC to merge into one, without announcing interim officers as speculated.