Ibekimi Oriamaja Reports
The All Progressives Congress, APC, leadership crisis may have taken a new turn following new plots by some stakeholders to depose the party’s National Chairman, Senator Abdullahi Adamu.
Adamu was re-elected as the party’s national chairman on March 26 at a convention to elect members of the APC National Working Committee NWC.
While there had been a buildup of complaints against Adamu, there had been no attempts to remove him.
Over the weekend, there were indications that some APC stakeholders were working to get the party chairman out of the way as part of troubleshooting efforts to appease the party’s Christian bloc.
According to an APC leader who requested anonymity, the attempt was to balance power within the APC.
“Yes, there are those who believe that having a Christian chairman and proposing a Christian Chief of Staff to the President will lessen the controversy generated by our Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket.” Some have proposed James Faleke, a federal lawmaker, for the position of Chief of Staff.
“There are concerns about Adamu’s continued leadership of the party.” The first requirement is to appease the Christian community.
“Second, in an election season, many of us expected a lot from Adamu, but he hasn’t done much.” We need the party’s bureaucracy to function during this period, but their salaries are non-existent, and you expect them to work efficiently? That is one point that could be used against the chairman.
“He was also the Chairman of the APC National Reconciliation Committee before becoming the party’s national chairman.” We expected him to have settled the major disagreements by now, but that has not happened.
“Our party’s leader, President Muhammadu Buhari, has also urged us to refund the money paid by aspirants at the convention that elected Adamu as national chairman.” Aspirants paid millions of dollars, but we have yet to refund them. These are a few of the problems.”
The party has yet to refund nomination fees to aspirants.
Another complaint leveled against Adamu was that the party has yet to comply with President Buhari’s directive to refund nomination fees to all aspirants who stepped down for the party’s consensus arrangement at the party’s March 26 National Convention.
As a result of its consensus arrangement, the party was supposed to have refunded aspirants from the ward to the national level who were forced to step down for others.
The party had also failed to pay staff salaries on time in the previous two months.
“The June salary was paid in the middle of July, while the staff only received their July pay last Friday, as opposed to payment on the 25th of every month,” according to another source.
“It will be remembered that, in an effort to perfect a consensus arrangement ahead of the party’s March 27 National Convention, President Buhari persuaded eight national chairmanship aspirants at the Villa on March 23 to step down for a consensus candidate in exchange for a refund of their nomination fee.”
