An alleged meeting of some ‘aggrieved’ members of Nigeria’s ruling party, All Progressives Congress (APC) did not hold as contained in a statement by the party.
The party had on Sunday said it was aware of plans by some of its officials to hold an “illegal meeting” on Sunday.
The party said the illegal meeting is “with a view to fault the decisions made by the NWC followed by the National Executive Committee (NEC) as regards the mode of the Party’s primary elections.”
The party through its spokesperson, Yekini Nabena, said identities of those plotting such meetings have been identified and “unless they desist from such they will be dealt with in line with the party’s constitution at the appropriate time”.
Mr Nabena alleged that the meeting was scheduled to hold by 2 p.m. at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel.
But a visit by PREMIUM TIMES to the venue at exactly 1:58pm indicated that there was no sign that such a meeting was holding or scheduled to hold at the venue.
Over 30 minutes later, people in the hotel vicinity were still going about their normal businesses with most of the hotel attendants in the vicinity not aware of such meeting. The reporter had no option but to ‘loiter’ around a bit.
“No meeting was scheduled to take place here,” a staffer of the hotel told a reporter.
When contacted to speak on the development, Mr. Nabena, who earlier raised the alarm hinted that the organisers “probably have decided to shift or call off the meeting”.
“I think they must have shifted the meeting to another venue or probably called it off because of the (media) publications,” he said.
The APC last week held its NEC meeting which was attended by President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
One of the major resolutions of the NEC meeting was that the party would adopt direct primaries for its presidential ticket while state chapters would decide whether or not to utilise direct or indirect primaries for other tickets.
Direct primaries involves all members of the party voting to elect candidates while indirect primaries involves delegates doing the election.
The indirect primaries had been largely criticised by many due to the overbearing influence state governors have on delegates and outcomes of such primaries.