APC governors agree for national convention will hold February – Bagudu

The Progressives Governors Forum (PGF), an umbrella body of governors elected on the All Progressives Congress (APC) platform, has given assurance that the party’s National Convention will be held in February.

“We discussed our upcoming convention, which you may recall I had cause to address the press after we visited President Buhari in November 2021, where the president and the party agreed that the convention would take place in February,” disclosed Governor Atiku Bagudu of Kebbi and chairman of the PGF.

He stated this while speaking with journalists at the end of a closed-door meeting on Sunday night in Abuja.

Mr Bagudu, who did not give a specific date for the event, said the February date as approved by President Muhammadu Buhari was sacrosanct and still feasible for the conduct of the event.

He added that the APC Caretaker and Extra-ordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC), as an organ of the party, was in the best position to announce the specific date for the convention.

“We are one group of stakeholders in the party and our party respects institutions. The appropriate organ of the party that will announce a date for the national convention is the CECPC,” he said.

Mr Bagudu said the meeting passed a vote of confidence on the Buni-led CECPC and two other governors, Governor Muhammed Bello of Niger and Governor Gboyega Oyetola of Osun.

He noted that the governors had run the party successfully and mobilised people.

“We took inputs about the reviews, and we noted all the misrepresentations in the press that we seek to correct that the PGF is one united body, as you can see evidently from the attendance,” Mr Bagudu stated.

He explained that the forum’s decision was unanimous, adding that it was united behind the president and the party’s caretaker committee.

There has been pressure on the APC Buni-led CECPC to fix a specific date for the party’s national convention following Mr Buhari’s approval that the event is held in February.

Salihu Lukman, the PGF director-general, recently called on committee members to resign if they would not be able to conduct the party’s national convention in February.