Daniel Kanu

 Victor Giadom, a former commissioner for Works in Rivers State from 2011 to 2015, no doubt, has shown that through sheer courage and persistence one can change the course of events.

Giadom put his name into national political prominence through his doggedness to pursue justice following the leadership vacuum created by the recent suspension of the All Progressives Congress (APC) National Chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole by an Appeal Court order.

This resulted in the emergence of two factions:  Hilliard Eta-led faction sympathetic to Oshiomhole, who earlier appointed the Deputy National Chairman (South), Abiola Ajimobi as an interim chairman.

Sadly enough, Ajimobi is no longer alive to be part of the script as he succumbed into the cold hands of death on the same day, Thursday, the NWC was dissolved by the party’s NEC.

Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos State, touted to be the national leader of the party is said to belong to this faction and in full control of it.

But citing a court judgment in March, Giadom, leader of the second faction, who held the position of the deputy national secretary of the party, declared himself the acting national chairman of the party.

In a statement, his counsel, Oluwole Afolabi, maintained that a court had recognised Giadom as acting chairman.

He said that the statement issued by the party affirming Senator Ajimobi as acting chairman must have been issued in error or out of ignorance of the order of the FCT High Court issued on the 16th of March, 2020, by Hon. Justice S.U. Bature in suit no. FCT/HC/M/6447/2020.

Investigations revealed that Rotimi Amaechi, a former governor of Rivers State and now Minister of Transport who has been engaged in an intense and devastating power struggle for the soul of APC with Tinubu, was providing strong backing to the Giadom-led camp.

However, Giadom was surreptitiously replaced on Monday by Worgu Boms, 24 hours after the Rivers State chapter of the party declared him suspended over “gross infractions of the party’s constitution.”

Giadom’s suspension was backed by the Rivers State High Court judgment on Tuesday, some minutes after he scheduled a virtual NEC meeting to be attended by President Muhammadu Buhari for Thursday, 25 June.

In reaction to the scheduled NEC meeting on the instruction of Giadom, the then party’s acting National Secretary, Waziri Bulama, backed by 16 other members of the NWC in saying that Giadom lacked the constitutional right to call for such a meeting.

“We are constrained to once again react to a purported invitation to a National Executive Committee meeting of our great party; the All Progressives Congress (APC) issued by one Victor Giadom who until the last general elections in 2019 held the position of the deputy national secretary of the party. Our esteemed members are advised to disregard the invitation,” Bulama said in a statement issued earlier on Wednesday.

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Buhari all along appeared to have looked the other way, since the fight by the different factions for supremacy and control of the party structure, ahead of the 2023 presidential election started.

Perhaps, sensing the danger ahead, Buhari speaking on Tuesday through his spokesperson, Femi Adesina, about the Edo State APC crisis, which is an offshoot of the power struggle at the national level, said that as a democrat he would rather prefer to allow the process to run its course.

Against all permutations in political quarters, Buhari on Wednesday endorsed Giadom as the eligible person for the position as acting national chairman.

The statement confirming the President’s endorsement was made available to the media by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, in Abuja on Wednesday.

According to Garba, “the president has received very convincing advice on the position of the law as far as the situation in the party is concerned and has determined that the law is on the side of Victor Giadom as acting national chairman”.

It was not surprising that Buhari attended the meeting called by Giadom as well as the governors and the leaders of the National Assembly, among others.

Buhari’s endorsement was the masterstroke Giadom needed and that changed the probability of the entire action that gave him the enviable relevance.

With the President’s recognition of the supremacy and control of the party by Giadom, who has Amaechi solidly behind him, some political pundits are of the view that it is one of the ways to checkmate and whittle the Tinubu influence, ahead of his 2023 presidential ambition.

Even with the conviction of Buhari to stick to Giadom, the NWC still maintained that the president may have been “offered wrong advice or blackmailed” into supporting Giadom, just as they contended that attending such a meeting amounted to embracing illegality and turning a blind eye to the infractions on the Constitution of their party.

Expectedly, the party’s NEC in an effort to mitigate the damage the power tussle in the party has caused, had no option than to dissolve the NWC and in place constituted a caretaker committee and extra-ordinary convention planning committee with Yobe governor, Mai Mala Buni as the head.

Although Buhari has warned that there would be dire consequences for any member who chooses to ignore the party’s directive, it was gathered that someNWC members loyal to Oshiomhole have resolved to challenge the action in court.

For Giadom, there is no victor, no vanquished given the dissolution of the NWC, which also ended his role in the first stanza of the tussle.

Giadom contested in the 2019 election as the party’s deputy governorship candidate with Tonye Cole in Rivers State.