By Emmanuel Oloniruha
Former Rep. Alphonsus Komsol from Plateau has cautioned the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state against unlawful suspension of any member of the party.
Komsol, the immediate past representative of Shendam/Quaan-Pan/Mikang Constituency of Plateau, gave the advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Saturday in Abuja.
Fielding questions on the internal crisis rocking the state chapter of the APC, he described alleged plot to suspend him and some other members of APC in the state as a huge joke.
According to him, the plan is not healthy for the party, saying executing such action will be an ill wind which will do more damage than good.
The ex-lawmaker attributed the intra-party crisis to “politics of exclusion” in which the then ruling party and government allegedly excluded some critical stakeholders from the party’s major activities and decision making deliberately.
He said that most of the APC members were not carried along in the affairs of the party as they were given the leper’s treatment and relegated to the background.
“Prior to the general elections, for instance, to the best of my knowledge, no caucus meeting was ever held. On the few occasions that party meetings were held, usually in Government House, it was only for state government appointees to be given strict marching orders on whatever the government wanted.
“Throughout the four years that I was elected to the House of Representatives, never was any caucus meeting of the party ever held.
“Even right now, about four months now since the party’s depletion and comprehensive losses in the 2023 elections, nobody has called us to a meeting,” Komsol said.
The ex-legislator said there was need for urgent reconciliatory meeting and post-mortem appraisal of the situation to chart a way forward.
“While we have been waiting expectantly for such a meeting to be called, there is no such initiative.
“We are faced with a situation that I’ll describe as an uneasy silence of the graveyard,” he said.
Komsol however said that the recent plan to suspend some prominent stakeholders from the party would further throw the APC into deeper irredeemable crisis.
The APC stalwart alleged that some stakeholders targeted with suspension were those who paid a solidarity visit to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Sen. George Akume, following his appointment by the President.
These, according to him, include ex-Gov. Joshua Dariye, Chief Amos Gizo, Dame Pauline Tallen, Sen. Hezekiah Dimka, Sen. Nora Daduut, Lumumba Adeh, Alhaji Dasuki Nakande, Comptroller Victor Dimka, Chief Danyaro Sarpiya and himself, among others.
He said: “For God’s sake, Akume is one of our own, from the North Central and the defunct Benue-Plateau State.
“When he was appointed, we expected the state chapter of the party to immediately congratulate him and arrange for the state’s APC stakeholders to pay him a solidarity visit, but there was no such move.
“As such, some of us decided to do the needful by paying Akume the solidarity visit, which triggered the latest round of turmoil within the state chapter of the APC.
“Their grievance is that the person who they wanted to be appointed SGF lost out to Akume.
“So, immediately after the news and photos of our visit went viral, we started receiving all manner of threats from our opponents within the party.”
Komsol said that the solution to the party’s crisis was for the immediate past governor Simon Lalong, who is still the APC leader in the state, to summon a meeting of critical stakeholders.
He said that would help the party to do some critical stock taking, identify the lapses and what went wrong with a view to learning lessons, making corrections, reconcile and rebuild the APC into state.
“It would surprise you to know that while I was still serving as the House of Representatives member representing the sitting governor’s Federal Constituency, at some point, for over six months, I tried to see the governor to no avail.
“We are politicians, we cannot fold our hands and watch the APC crash permanently in Plateau state.
“We are President Tinubu’s die-hard supporters, we have to do everything possible within our means to bring back the party to galvanise support for him at the grassroots level in our state,” he said.
The APC chieftain, who described himself, Gizo, Tallen, Nakande and few others in the state as trusted allies of Tinubu, claimed he knew the president for almost 20 years, since he was the governor of Lagos state.
Komsol recalled that his first encounter with Tinubu and what he did instantly amazed him so much that he had vowed to be his disciple forever.
“It was during the arrest and detention of Simon Lalong, the then Speaker of the Plateau State House of Assembly and immediate past governor of the state by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
“Former Gov. Joshua Dariye had dispatched me and a few others to Lagos to do everything possible to secure Lalong’s release, but the bail conditions were very stringent.
“However, Tinubu who was then governor on the platform of an opposition party, the Alliance for Democracy, came to our rescue and even gave us the title documents of properties for Lalong to be released after he had spent about 40 days in EFCC custody.
“So, for me, when Tinubu declared his interest in contesting for President, it was a very easy decision to make, support him to the end, no matter whose ox is gored, even if I was going to be the last man standing!”
He alleged that some of the people in the state claiming to be Tinubu supporters were just looking for political relevance and appointments.
Komsol said that as Tinubu’s faithful disciple, he played some prominent roles towards the victory of Tinubu during both the presidential primary election and his eventual emergence as President of Nigeria.
“During the elections, I was the Plateau State Coordinator of Tinubu’s Independent Campaign Committee and a prominent member of the Tinubu Support Group, as well as the Planning and Strategic Committee.
“I was also a member of the Presidential Campaign Council and Secretary, Contact and Mobilisation Committee, North Central of the Tinubu Campaign organogram.
“In fact, I was targeted, sacrificed and denied the APC’s second term Reps ticket by the APC at the state level because of my unwavering support for Tinubu prior to the presidential primaries,” he said.
He added that during the primary, him and others were able to convince some of the state’s delegates to vote for Tinubu, in spite of the internal forces within the party that directed the delegates to vote for former Minister Rotimi Amaechi. (NAN)
