By Ibrahim. Abdul’Aziz/Yola.
Adamawa State chapter of the All Peoples Congress (APC ) is currently swimming in troubled waters as intra party struggles for the control of the party’s soul between the three blocks that fused into the party gained high momentum.
A chieftain of the party who wants to remain anonymous disclosed that if the intra party squabbles are not well managed, the party may experience a serious implosion which may lead to its factionalization.
The Chieftain said there is serious agitation in the party following the romance between the interim National Vice Chairman of the Party Alhaji Umar Duhu and Governor Nyako sequel to the former’s visit to governor to woo him into the party recently.
The agitation was also fuelled by the suspicion in the fusing blocks that Duhu wanted to give Governor Nyako an edge in the distribution of offices of the party because the governor came to the APC through the ANPP which he chaired before the APC merger was consummated.
It may be recalled that the former Lagos State Military Governor General Buba Marwa was a former member of the PDP who was pushed by his no -love – lost relationship with Governor Nyako to move to CPC in order to realize his gubernatorial ambition.
Also the gubernatorial candidate for Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in the 2011 gubernatorial polls, Honorable Markus Gundiri who became the runner up in the election has challenged the legitimacy of Governor Nyako’s Government up to the Supreme Court.
Investigation has revealed that the two groups are now forging a union to fight the alleged injustice being foisted on them by the Duhu in his quest to give Nyako an edge over the two other blocks.
The Chieftain also accused the Zonal National Vice Chairman for mortgaging the party to Governor Nyako, stressing that Duhu has been receiving favour from Nyako and had also being promising him that he will effectively handle over the APC structure to him.
Though,Duhu denied the allegation saying that,they are just trying to woo those who matter in the political struggle.
The allegation is coming few days to the conduct of the party’s stakeholder’s meeting nationally where the distribution of offices to the fusing parties will be sorted out across the nation.
Against the backdrop of the slated meeting, the party chieftain has expressed discontent over the possibility that Governor Nyako may use the interim National Vice Chairman of the party Alhaji Umar Duhu to hijack the meeting.
‘’ We are not saying that Nyako should not join APC, but we are fully aware that he is a card carrying member of PDP,’’ he stated.
He disclaimed the position being painted by Duhu to the effect that he supervised the entry of about 300,000 PDP members into ANPP as fictitious saying all the said members are still card carrying members of the PDP.
’’Before the circle of defection from one political party to the other is completed, the defecting members must renounce their membership of their previous party by tendering their membership cards to the officials of the new party which will be substituted for the membership card of the new party. This is not the case with the defecting PDP members, so they are neither there nor here,” he said.
He explained that Marwa and Gundiri have now formed an alliance to resist any move by Nyako and his cohorts to hijack the party structure ahead of future polls.
‘’ Nyako believed that he can use the resources at his disposal to take over APC, knowing full well that both Marwa and Gundiri fought him valiantly from election tribunal to supreme court and will not allow him to take over the party structure from them because he fell apart with PDP.’’
However, in a swift reaction, the interim National Vice Chairman of the party Alhaji Umar Duhu said that has no obligation to reveal the activities of the party to individual members.
According added”I am not the state chairman of the party. I only take directives from Abuja and implement them and I believe it is not a crime to bring new members into the party fold as the mission of the party is to build an impregnable platform that would wrest power from
the ruling party.
He added that the national leadership of the party has drawn a road map to accommodate all the merging political parties through an accepted sharing formula and therefore, it is hasty for people to start crying wolf because the state harmonization committees were not yet to be inaugurated.