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Adamu’s days as APC boss numbered, as Tinubu’s men dig in *Set to move at Monday’s NEC meeting
Abdullahi Adamu, embattled National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), seems to have his days numbered as the helmsman at the 40 Blantyre Street, Wuse, Abuja headquarters of the party, following signals emanating that he might be shown the way to the exit door by a tendency in the party, who see him as a stumbling block to President Bolat Tinubu.
Adamu, believed to be against the President since the days of the APC primaries, where her once unilaterally announce Ahmad Lawan as the party’s choice, before he was countered and Tinubu eventually prevailed, is reported to have continued to engaged in a cold war, regardless the emergence of the former Governor of Lagos State and the party’s National Leader.
The latest indication to the said war, was last week’s nomination of the principal officers of the National Assembly party caucus, which though reportedly backed by the President, was denounced by the party chairman, who said those named were not the APC candidates and therefore dismissed the development as a rumour.
The Sun, reports that party leaders and members who have not hidden their desire to see the chairman vacate his office at the party, are mapping out fresh strategies to launch their offensive to sack him at the National Executive Council (NEC) meeting holding at the Presidential Villa, Abuja on Monday.
Adamu, who was elected last year, barely a few weeks before the presidential primaries of the APC, has since been engrossed in one crisis or the other, with some members of party’s National Working Committee (NWC), which he heads, openly calling for his sack.
Adamu’s latest troubles, it was gathered, are being fuelled by aggrieved members of the National Working Committee (NWC) of APC, predominantly drawn from the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and some South West leaders of the party who have yet to forgive him over his failed attempt to frustrate the emergence of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the candidate of the APC in June 2022.
Trouble actually started for the APC chairman a few weeks before the inauguration of Tinubu as President. Contrary to the established practice, where the NWC of APC zoned the different leadership positions in the National Assembly, Tinubu took charge of the role and openly endorsed those he wanted.
Playing a second fiddle, Adamu-led NWC hurriedly released a statement, aligning with the position of the then president-elect.
Again, as soon as Tinubu took over as President, Adamu was reportedly snubbed in the selection of presidential aides and appointment of members of the Federal Executive Council (FEC).
Instead, the new alternative leaders of APC from the ACN bloc were said to have assumed the responsibilities of the party’s chairman.
The last straw was the appointment of principal officers of both chambers of the National Assembly, which is the established responsibility of NWC of the political parties.
Instead, APC leaders in the Senate and In the House of Representatives, were reportedly picked by the Presidency and without recourse to APC’s NWC. They were announced on the floor of both chambers.
Apparently embarrassed at the development, the Adamu-led NWC released a statement, disowning the action taken by the leadership of the National Assembly in alleged connivance with the Presidency.
Since the latest incident, a clear evidence of Adamu’s waning influence within the party, the APC chairman has reportedly been scouting for support ahead of the NEC meeting of APC, holding at the Presidential Villa on Monday.
Adamu’s meeting with President Tinubu on Wednesday, where he had reportedly gone to solicit understanding, might not have gone according to plan, sources familiar with the development told Saturday Sun.
Instead, some members of APC NWC have reportedly moved against the chairman and asking for his ouster. The aggrieved NWC members are mobilising ahead of the NEC meeting, where Adamu’s fate might be decided by the highest organ of the APC.
With a divided National Working Committee, and with Adamu’s allies out of office, it is unclear if the former governor of Nasarawa State will survive the coming tsunami that had long been predicted.
Though APC spokesman, Felix Morka, said he would not comment on the issue when Saturday Sun contacted him on Friday, Adamu’s harshest critic, National Vice Chairman, North West, Salihu Lukman, who is said to be insisting on his ouster, listed so many sins against him, including deliberate refusal to convene meetings of relevant organs, especially NEC for over one year.
Lukman, while claiming that the APC boss had contravened and violated the ruling party’s Constitution, said: “The sad reality is that the APC as constituted today is only a shadow of itself with a National Chairman that is highly unaccountable and running affairs of the party more as a garrison commander. He relates with his colleagues in the NWC just like his appointees. In their name, he meets other leaders of the party and seeks to manipulate the party’s decisions to suit personal vested interests that is only known to him.”
The report, which claimed that Tinubu might not have taken a position on Adamu’s issue, though his allies were mounting pressure on the him to take charge of the party, ahead of key governorship elections coming up later in the year, quoted sources as saying though it was difficult to predict Tinubu’s position, the days of the party boss was numbered.
Chidi Odinkalu, Nigeria’s fiery lawyer, law teacher and former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), is emphatic that President Bola Tinubu is pushing to perpetuate himself in office, beginning with gaming the electoral process in 2027.
Odinkalu, Professor of Practice in International Human Rights Law at the Fletcher School, told his host Naija Unfiltered, a popular Nigerian podcast programme, that he was as sure as death that the President would not exit office in 2031, if he succeeded with his current gambit to remain in power beyond next year.
Hear him: “Yes. But as I said, let me repeat myself. There’ll be a third term. President Tinubu has not done all of this just for another four years. There will be a third term. And anybody who is doing, ‘it is not our portion,’ is not reading the evidence.”
To achieve this aim, the activist, who was also emphatic that the National Assembly, would play a role, added: “The current National Assembly is anything but national or an assembly. And if it’s an assembly, it’s not a parliamentary one. Many people have called it a rubber stamp, but I think that is actually abusive of rubber stamps. I think this National Assembly is a disgrace.
Citing how bizarre and completely compliant the national legislature had become to Tinubu, the ex-NHRC’s boss, stated: “If you can change your national anthem in less than 24 hours with no public hearing, no public consultation, no public involvement, it tells you you don’t have a country because a national anthem is fundamental to the construction of a national identity.”
Also referring to the current move by the President to introduce state police, Odinkalu, wondered how the Nigerian Senate would introduce the bill to that effect and proceed towards the first and second readings, as well as committee stage and passage in less than two hours, questioning how that was possible in normal clime.
Hear him: “Once we finish our elections, we’re going to amend our Constitution, introduce a single six-year presidential term. The current incumbent will be elected until 2031. In 2031, what will happen? The question will be, will he be entitled to run on the six-year term or will he not?
“You will then get the best Senior Advocates in Nigeria telling you the law is not retrospective. That is why the administration is supporting the litigation over President Jonathan’s tenure—not because the Constitution is not clear, but because they will say there is precedent. There will be a third term, and I’m prepared to bet on it.”
“If we continue to pay ransom, we are encouraging these criminals to kidnap more people. The cycle will only continue unless we stop rewarding criminality,” were the words of Dauda Lawal, Governor of Zamfara State, with which he blamed those in the habit of paying ransoms as the major factor fuelling the current wave of kidnapping incidents across the country.
Lawal, on Thursday at the ARISE News/THISDAY Town Hall Conference on State Police and National Security in Abuja, told his audience how he flatly refused to pay a ₦300 million ransom demanded by kidnappers who abducted his brothers in 2019.
Reiterating his opposition to negotiating with bandits and renewed his support for the establishment of state police, Lawal, while recounting the incident, said: “My own brothers were kidnapped in 2019, and the kidnappers demanded about ₦300 million. I told them I was not going to pay a dime. If they wanted to kill them, they could go ahead.”
Stating that his brothers were eventually released without any ransom being paid, he argued that paying ransom usually emboldened criminal groups by providing financial incentives for further kidnappings.
He added: “My position on ransom payments remains unchanged. I will not negotiate, and I will not pay ransom to any criminal, no matter what happens.”
Endorsing the move for the establishment of state police, to enable governors have greater operational authority over security within their states, he regretted that the current constitutional arrangement left governors with responsibility for security without corresponding powers to direct security agencies.
His words: “In as much as I am called the chief security officer of the state, I do not have the command-and-control authority to direct the operations of the security agencies. I’m prepared to support the funding of state police if the proposed policing structure is established. I’m confident that decentralised policing will improve intelligence gathering, response time and the overall fight against insecurity.”
Exactly seven years, two months and four days after he forced Walter Onnoghen, the 16th Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) out of office, Danladi Umar, former Chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), on Thursday, found himself in Kuje prison.
Justice Peter Kekemeke, of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), sitting in Maitama, handed the ex-CCT boss the unwelcome package on Thursday, following his arraignment by the Federal Government on a four-count corruption charge.
Umar’s ordeal began after an investigations revealed that he abused his official position by conferring an undue advantage on himself while serving as head of the tribunal, having in 2021, reportedly using his wife’s bank account to collect the sum of N5.5 million from a contractor engaged to paint the headquarters of the CCT in Abuja.
He was also accuse of using the same account to collect another N6million on January 25, 2024, from a contractor who handled the digitisation of the CCT’s records and yet another N2.43 million a contractor paid as tuition fee of his daughter at Baze University, Abuja.
After pleading not guilty to offences, said to be punishable under section 19 of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000, Christopher Mshelia, lawyer to the FG, prosecuting the matter, applied for his remand in a correctional facility, while urging the court to set a date for the commencement of trial.
His pleas to be freed on bail pending the determination of the case, was opposed by the prosecution, which drew the court’s attention to the fact that it had just been served with the bail application, saying it needed time to respond to it, forcing Kekemeke to adjourn the case till July 15 for hearing while the former CCT boss remained behind bars.
Umar, had as CCT Chairman, on January 23, 2019, issued a controversial ex parte order that led to the removal of a serving Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Walter Onnoghen.
Following the ex parte order, the late President Muhammadu Buhari, on January 25, swore in the next most senior jurist of the Supreme Court, Justice Tanko Muhammad, to take over the leadership of the judiciary as Acting CJN.
Even though Onnoghen later voluntarily resigned his position as CJN on April 4, Umar went ahead and convicted him on April 18, 2019, on the federal government’s allegation that he had failed to properly declare his assets as required by law.
He gave the federal government the go-ahead to confiscate all monies in five accounts belonging to the former CJN, and also removed him as Chairman of both the NJC and the Federal Judiciary Service Commission (FJSC).
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