By 
Kim Musa Ndoh
Loyalists of the suspended National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr. Adams Oshiomhole, seemed to have drawn a battle line with President Muhammadu Buhari over his endorsement Wednesday of a meeting of the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC), slated for today at the State House, Abuja.
But despite the endorsement of the NEC meeting by Buhari, the National Secretary of APC, Mr. Waziri Bulama, has described the NEC meeting as illegal.
The Oshiomhole loyalists, comprising no fewer than nine governors, about 15 members of the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) and chairmen of the party in the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), have vowed to boycott the meeting.
The NEC meeting was convened by the court-installed acting National Chairman of the party, Chief Victor Giadom, whom many members of the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) members have insisted lacks the power to proclaim such a gathering because he has been suspended from the party and is no longer a NWC member.
The leadership tussle in the party since the June 16 judgment of the Court of Appeal that affirmed Oshiomhole’s suspension riven the party further yesterday when the president, earlier in the day, broke his silence, saying that based on advice, he would attend the NEC meeting. His decision was widely regarded as an endorsement of Giadom’s leadership of the party.
Few hours later, the NWC, rising from a meeting yesterday night, chaired by another acting National Chairman of the party, Chief Hilliard Eta, said its members would boycott the meeting.
CREST TV also learnt that the governors are expected to meet today in Abuja before going to the State House to formally inform the president that they would not be attending the meeting.
However, analysts told THISDAY that with no clear-cut agenda and a defective notice of meeting issued by Giadom, the NEC meeting is already fundamentally flawed and whatever decision taken is litigious.