John Adams, Minna
The leadership crisis rocking the Niger State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) worsened, yesterday, as a group removed the state’s party chairman, Alhaji Jibrin Imam, secretary, Mohammed Liman and treasurer, Dr. Shafi Abdulsalami.
This development is coming barely 24 hours after Governor Abubakar Sani Bello, who is leader of the party, jetted out of the state to lead the Edo state reconciliation committee of the party.
The removal of the party executives was rectified by 22 local government chairmen, 25 secretaries of the party, and 27 of the 33 member state Executive Committee after their meeting which lasted several hours at a hotel in Minna, yesterday.
The group, at the meeting presided over by deputy chairman of the party, Ali Kapenter, replaced the chairman with Aliyu Saidu Galkogo, while Sulaiman Abdullahi, assistant state youth leader replaced Liman as secretary, and Abdusalami was replaced by Saidu as treasurer.
The group accused the sacked officers of misdemeanour, abuse of office, financial recklessness and alleged diversion of over N872million between 2014 and 2019.
Imam, the embattled chairman, however, described his removal as illegal, saying the group were “jokers” as they lacked the legal right to take such action.
“They don’t have any constitutional right to summon such a meeting. I am the person allowed by law to call any meeting. Nobody presented any allegation before me nor was I invited to face any panel. They didn’t exhaust all avenues provided by the party constitution, aside from this, the case they are talking about is still in court, they have only taken the laws into their hands,” he said.
A youth leader from Zone A, Ibrahim Muazu, who attended the meeting told Daily Sun that “our decision is backed by the national headquarters of our party.”
The National Secretariat had directed all states with crisis to go and resolve their dispute internally and with this action, we believed that the crisis is over here in Niger,” he said.