Barely a few months to next year's general elections, the All
Progressives Congress (APC) has run into a legal jam which
may adversely affect its plans for the presidential primaries.
THISDAY gathered Friday that whereas the party was
contemplating adopting a middle course to both direct and
indirect methods of primaries, it found out that such would
be contrary to the existing APC constitution.
A party source told THISDAY that the aim of convening the
convention was to enable the party leadership to amend the
constitution and to make elaborate provisions that would
accommodate the new initiative for presidential primaries.
It was learnt that the opposition party was battling to stave
off brewing crisis over disagreements on the method of
presidential primaries to be adopted for which one of the
aspirants has threatened court action.
According to the APC constitution, nomination for elective
positions for local government council, State House of
Assembly, House of Representatives, Senate, Governor and
President shall be through direct or indirect primary
election.
However, APC's National Executive Council (NEC) had at one
of its meetings, approved the adoption of modified direct
primaries, by which it hopes to allow room for flexibility to
trim down the number of members that would participate in
the primaries.
While explaining the party's choice of modified direct
primaries, the APC spokesman, Alhaji Lai Muhammed said
what the party initially wanted was a direct primary which
would enable every card-carrying member to exercise his
right to decide who represents the party during elections.
He said the party's attention was later drawn to a condition
set by the Independent National Electoral Commission
(INEC) that presidential primaries and conventions must be
held under one roof rendered direct primaries almost
impracticable.
Addressing Journalists at the end of APC NEC meeting held
yesterday in Abuja, Lai Muhammed said the party had
scheduled an extraordinary convention to hold on October
29 where it would propose certain amendments to their
constitution.
"Principally we proposed certain amendment to the
constitution of the party that would allow the party to
function much more differently and to that extent we
proposed also extraordinary convention of the party on 29
of this month in Abuja to submit the amendment to the
National convention of the party.
"It is part of the reason why we need to amend our
constitution because the Electoral Act 2010 as amended says
that one can conduct a primary by direct or indirect method
but if you are going to so then you must be explicit on how
you are going to conduct it and that is why we need to
amend our constitution", he said.
Speaking on the allegation of involvement of key members
of the party in Bring-Back-Our-ChibokGirls campaign,
Muhammed said nothing in the law prevented any party
member from associating or canvassing opinion on issue he
felt strongly about.