All Progressives Congress (APC) grandees and their loyalists are headed for a showdown with a chieftain of the party, Bola Tinubu, and his henchmen, going by the visible signs everywhere in Abuja.
Both groups have engaged in shadow boxing for three weeks running.
The Tinubu group is mobilising to edge out APC National Chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun, while Oyegun loyalists are plotting to have Tinubu expelled from the party.
APC National Working Committee (NWC) members met at the national secretariat for several hours on Thursday, June 18 and Friday, June 19 to deliberate on the way forward. The meeting ended in deadlock on both days.
The NWC members are divided over the approach adopted by the party in the election of principal officers of the National Assembly (NASS) which raised controversy within the ranks.
Some favour the mock election organised by the party, others prefer the election of presiding officers on the floor of the NASS.
The meetings were the first after the NASS leadership crisis began. They were presided over by Odigie-Oyegun and all the NWC members were in attendance.
Each meeting lasted several hours but was inconclusive, according to sources.
APC officials did not disclose what transpired at the meeting, but it is obvious that all was not well as all posters and portraits of Tinubu, which used to be in strategic locations on the premises of the APC secretariat, have been removed.
A source said there will be a change of guard at the national level of the party’s leadership. He complained that after the victory at the polls, a few individuals have positioned themselves for spoils while others are left with little or nothing.
The Tinubu camp is said to be planning to use APC state chairmen, who constitute the majority in the National Executive Committee (NEC), to move against Odigie-Oyegun.
The group could not consummate the plot before Odigie-Oyegun struck a counter plot. He had a meeting with the state chairmen on Wednesday, June 17 over the crisis in the party.
He has accepted Bukola Saraki as Senate President while Tinubu loyalists are still kicking against any move by the party to recognise him.
Saraki continues to seek additional succour elsewhere.
On Friday, June 19, he reportedly visited former President Olusegun Obasanjo in Otta, accompanied by Senators Andy Ubah, Ahmed Sani, and Danjuma Goje.
Sources said he asked Obasanjo to lobby Tinubu to support him. Whether the move pays off depends on what happens in the coming days.
