It may go against the grain for the Chairman of a ruling-party that has just won a fresh mandate to throw in the towel when he should be savouring the sweetness of having done a good job; winning a presidential election. But it would appear that the powers that be may have an axe to
It may go against the grain for the Chairman of a ruling-party that has just won a fresh mandate to throw in the towel when he should be savouring the sweetness of having done a good job; winning a presidential election. But it would appear that the powers that be may have an axe to grind with the APC National Chairman, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, whose tenure is rumoured to have come to abrupt end on Sunday July 16, following his resignation along with that of his Secretary Senator Iyiola Omisore.
Though the nature and truth of their resignations are unclear; whether voluntary, induced or procured and at what price. Nobody has seen their purported letters of resignation addressed to the President. The President is in faraway Nairobi Kenya, attending the African Union meeting. Will the President accept their purported letters as submitted or would he urge them to return to their work while he tries to smoothen out all the grey areas of disagreements between the pro and anti- Adamu-led National Working Committee forces. What may not be far from the truth is that, the removal of Senator Adamu, if true, may be a part of the administration’s strategy of hitting the ground running by bulldozing all enemies “real and perceived” out of the way, for the government to move fast with all its plan contained in the renewed hope document.
The position of a party chairman with the President of the same party is a hot seat. Any chairman that tries to assert his authority may have himself to blame. The constitution of the party partly created the problem by affirming, the President as the leader of the party. Same thing obtains in the states where the governors are asserted as the leaders of the party in the states. Apart from the party constitution, there will always be a gravitation of party members towards the Executive arm of government where there is more than enough patronage to go dispense.
Senator Adamu has neither denied nor confirmed his purported resignation as he was reported to have said: “I won’t talk about the issue because the president is away,” However, there is a proposed meeting of the National Caucus and National Executive Committee NEC of the APC this week. The meeting is expected to ratify the newly constituted National Advisory Council otherwise known as Board of Trustees and may likely approve a timetable for a midterm elective convention to fill party vacancies.
Some of the Sins of Senator Abdullahi Adamu
Senator Adamu is alleged to have attempted throwing spanner in the works when he disagreed with the selection of the leadership of the National Assembly believed to have enjoyed endorsement from the villa. He wanted to assert the party’s supremacy but, in the process, may have lost his grip of the party. The party and the government are both in the grip of President Bola Tinubu whose style and political pedigree are at variance with the immediate past President Buhari who bothered less about party affairs while facing governance. The emergence of the National Assembly leadership without the party’s input was enough signal for Senator Adamu to change his dancing steps and understand that the ground may have been cut from under his feet.
Under the APC constitution, only the NEC of the party is empowered to appoint an external auditor to audit the accounts of the party but Senator Adamu, after being pressured to render financial accounts, shortly after the primaries decided to enlist his own auditor, thereby bypassing the NEC. Whereas Senators Adamu and Omisore argued that NEC had since delegated its power to act to the NWC. It is believed in some quarters that a lot of income generated during the party primaries running into billions of Naira may have been frittered away by Senator Adamu and Senator Omisore.
Senator Adamu may also be visited with the sin of not supporting President Tinubu in the APC primaries and refused to remain neutral but instead supported Senator Ahmed Lawan, the then Senate President.
Sources revealed the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu was one of the people who advised Senator Adamu to resign because he seems to have become a liability to the party. He was, however, prevailed upon to step down as the party chairman after Imo State Governor and Chairman of the Progressives Governors’ Forum, Hope Uzodimma warned him that if he didn’t resign, the Party NEC may remove him given the groundswell of opposition against him.
Several persons are jostling for positions in the APC. Senator Omisore is not having it easy with the immediate past Governor Oyetola in his home-state of Osun. Already, the position of Secretary to the Government of the Federation has been given to Senator George Akume from the North Central geopolitical zone and there may be a need to move the position of the Chairman of the Party to another zone as part of political balancing.
The next twenty four hours will clear all fogs and chart a new way forward for the APC but whether Senator Adamu will survive the gathering knives, only time will tell.
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