John Adams, Minna

With barely one month to the inauguration of Niger State Governor-elect Alhaji Abubakar Sani Bello, for the second term in office, communities in the state have begun to agitate over who should be their representative in the new cabinet.

Indications to this emerged last week when posters, denouncing some serving commissioners in the state by their communities flooded the public domain.

No fewer than five serving commissioners were said to be currently at loggerhead with their constituencies and the people have vowed that they would not support their reappointment into the new cabinet.

Prominent among those commissioners is that of Women Affairs, Barr. Amina Musa Guar, who revealed to our correspondent that some people in her constituency don’t want Governor Bello to reappoint her.

Barr Guar said some people in a certain part of her local government were not comfortable with a woman, especially from a minority section of the local government to be their political leader.

“I am from the minority area in the local government and again because some people believe that the minority in Paikoro local government should not have a voice in the politics of the area.”

The commissioner who spoke on Saturday while reacting to the posters which flooded parts of the local government and the state capital with the inscription “No more Barr Amina Musa Guar as Commissioner for Women Affairs,” and with a large “X” in red colour marked across her portrait on the poster.

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The posters appeared barely one week after the embattled woman commissioner was allegedly suspended by the Paikoro local government chapter of the party (APC) for what the party called her “anti-party activities.”

She, however, said the allegation against her amounted to “calling a dog a bad name in other to hang it,” stressing that “this is a setup, because there is no way this could be true since I delivered my polling unit, my ward and other wards in my local government during the Presidential and governorship elections.”

She said that she wanted her accusers to explain to the world what she did that amounted to anti-party activities.

According to her, it was either they were obsessed with the word “anti-party or they don’t understand the meaning of anti-party.”

She also alleged that some politicians in her local government were not happy with the way she carried out her skill-acquisition programme.

“I am dealing directly with the beneficiaries; I am not going through any party man or woman and so far I have got favourable results from the programme.

“Not less than 5,350 beneficiaries have been trained since I started this programme. Some people are not happy because I did not go through them so that they will corner the programme for members of their immediate families.”

She further alleged that being the focal person (NSIP), her refusal to allow them to control the Home Grown School Feeding Programme had also contributed to their desire to get her out of office.