APC Crisis: Unresolved Differences as Presidency, Govs Meeting Deadlocked

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo yester­day held a closed-door meeting with the leadership of the National Assembly and some state gov­ernors of the All Progressives Congress (APC) over some thorny national issues caus­ing disaffection in the ruling party.
The two-hour parley, held at the Osinbajo’s office, ended in a deadlock.

It commenced shortly be­fore President Muhammadu Buhari departed for an offi­cial trip to Morocco and was attended by the Secretary to the Government of the Feder­ation (SGF), Babachir Lawal;
the Senate President Buko­la Saraki and Speaker, House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara, represented the National Assembly while Governors Ibukunle Amo­sun (Ogun); Rochas Okoro­cha (Imo); Jubrilla Bindow (Adamawa); Abubakar Bel­lo (Niger) and Abdulaziz Yari (Zamfara) represented the APC governors.
The governors, who emerged from the meeting with not-so-cheerful mien, declined to speak to the press, with Okorocha saying that “they said I should not talk.”
However, before entering their separate cars at the fore­court of the Aso Rock Villa, Saraki and Dogara met again informally with the governors briefly and they all departed amid laughter.
Before leaving, Saraki, who was asked by journalists what transpired at the meet­ing, initially told them to rath­er wait to hear from the Vice President’s office.
But when pestered on why the meeting with Osin­bajo appeared to have been a stormy session, Saraki said that “there’s nothing like a stormy session.”
He added that the meeting centred on how to move Nige­ria forward by ensuring more inclusiveness and collabora­tion between the Executive and the Legislature.
His words: “I’m sure the Vice President will issue a statement; but it’s nothing of great alarm. It’s all for good governance, inclusion and collaboration with all arms (of government). The states are here, National Assembly executives just came up with ideas on how to make things work even better, that’s all.”
The ruling APC has been contending with differences among its top members fol­lowing what many of them have narrowed down to the President’s reluctance to car­ry them along in major deci­sions.
This non-consultation has been linked to disaffec­tion with federal appoint­ments made by the President, including ministers, heads of parastatals and recently, am­bassadors-designate, which some APC governors rejected.
Also, the APC Nation­al Leader, Bola Ahmed Tinu­bu, has not hidden his dis­gust with the party’s National Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, whose resignation he had demanded following the crisis that resulted from party primaries in Ondo State.
The Senate’s rejection of the request for an approval of a $29.9 billion foreign loan sought by President Buhari is also believed to have featured in the meeting.
The lawmakers’ action has equally been traced to in­adequate consultations by the Presidency over such major is­sues.
The lawmakers also re­fused to approve the Presiden­cy’s Medium Term Expendi­ture Framework (MTEF) on which the 2017 National Budget is predicated, citing similar reasons.
Although there were spec­ulations that Osinbajo dis­cussed the loan request and MTEF with Saraki and Dog­ara during the meeting, the absence of the government’s Economic Team at the parley, raised posers over the claims.