Exclusive: APC Legal Team Moves To Vacate Court Order Stopping Convention

The Legal Committee of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Caretaker Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC) is reportedly working to get judges to vacate a court order stopping its elective National Convention that it had scheduled for March 26, 2022.

Bwari Division of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory in suit number FCT/HC/CV/2958/2021 had ordered that the APC can only conduct its national convention after the determination of the substantive suit pending before the court.

The court order has hobbled the APC as the next adjourned date of March 30, 2022, means it would not be able to hold its convention.

With the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) having published elections timetable, the APC is now under pressure to meet stipulated timelines failing which it may not be able to field candidates in the 2023 General Elections.

The ruling party has been mired in crisis and controversies surrounding its national convention as high-ranking party leaders first clashed over the date for the convention and are now embroiled over controversial endorsements of candidates by President Muhammadu Buhari at the behest of some northern state governors.

A source told this publication that “the Legal Sub-Committee of CECPC is now frantically shopping for judges, who will hide behind legal technicalities to vacate the subsisting court order that has barred the APC from holding its convention.

“It is a serious matter because our party leaders are now seeing that the party is inching towards the 2019 Rivers and Zamfara states scenario where candidates fielded by the party were deemed ineligible. So, as things stand, the team will do all that is necessary to avert that situation.

“Conservatively, they have voted as much as N5 billion to ensure that the court order is vacated. They have strategized to work with more than one judge to increase the success rate of this intervention,” the source said.

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