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A fresh move to oust the national chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress, Abdullahi Ganduje is afoot by power brokers in the presidential villa.
It was learnt that the move would entail easing off the embattled former governor of Kano State through an ambassadorial appointment in order not to disgrace him out of office.
APC has had five national chairmen (excluding Ganduje), with the majority of them exiting their position in crisis-ridden and controversial circumstances.
The party is known for sacking its national chairmen or forcing them to resign before the end of their tenure.
From 2013 when the APC was formed till date, it has had five national chairmen, with the majority of them exiting their position in crisis-ridden and controversial circumstances.
The five APC national chairmen since 2013 are Chief Bisi Akande (2013 – 2014); Chief John Oyegun (2014 – 2018); Comrade Adams Oshiomhole (2018 – 2020); Governor Mai Mala Buni (2020-2022) and Senator Abdullahi Adamu (2022 – 2023).
However, as speculations of underground plots by power brokers within the presidency to get rid of Ganduje grip the political space, some APC stalwarts and other prominent stakeholders have said Ganduje could only be removed within the dictates of the constitution of the party.
“Ganduje is facing criminal charges at the Kano State High Court, brought by the state government. A fresh N52 billion fraud allegation has also been levelled against him with graphic details of alleged diverted funds under his watch flooding the social media.”
Though dismissing the speculation that the former governor of Kano State would soon be thrown out of the chairmanship office, some of the ruling party stalwarts in their separate interviews with The Point, disclosed that bickering against the office Ganduje currently occupies could not be ruled out.
Amid the replacement moves, the APC national chairman is also struggling to maintain his relationship with President Bola Tinubu, which he said his purported 2027 presidential campaign posters aimed at destroying.
In a statement on Sunday by his Chief Press Secretary, Edwin Olofu, Ganduje claimed that the posters were designed by opposition elements with the aim of sowing discord between him and the President.
On his rumoured impending exit from office, a chieftain of the ruling party, Kola Olabisi, said if the constitution of the party regards its chairmanship position as appointive, then its occupants should know that they could be removed at any time.
Olabisi, the Director of Media and Publicity of the Osun State chapter of APC said, “Anybody who holds an appointive position knows he is going to be removed one day. But what is there is that whenever such a situation arises, it is going to be done according to the constitution of the party.
“It is an elective position that is tenured, appointive position is not tenured. Anybody who occupies an appointive position can be removed any time inasmuch as it is done in accordance with the constitution of the party. Every party has its ways of operating but what is important is that it cannot be outside the dictates of the constitution.”
When asked whether it was good for the party to continue to remove its leaders at will, Olabisi stated, “It is a mere speculation that the party wants to remove Senator Ganduje. Not until it is formally announced that His Excellency, former Governor of Kano State and the National Chairman of APC, Senator Abdullahi Ganduje is removed, it remains a speculation.”
In his submission, a member of the Asiwaju Bola Tinubu Presidential Campaign Council, Olatunbosun Oyintiloye, dismissed the speculation of a plot to oust Ganduje, saying it was left to the national chairman if he wants to remain in office or wants to resign.
“I want to say categorically that the National Party Chairman of All Progressives Congress, Dr Abdullahi Ganduje, is still standing tall as Chairman of our great party and he is performing all the responsibilities attached to that exalted office, but bickering against such office cannot be ruled out.
“It is not in the character of the leadership of the party to sack or force its chairman to resign under any circumstances. Although there were insinuations coming up from different quarters, but such cannot hold water,” he said.
Reacting to the trend in the party where its leaders are removed unceremoniously, Oyintiloye said, “On the issue of tenure of chairmen, take for instance, Chief John Oyegun, finished his tenure, while others that resigned before the expiration of their tenure, might have genuine reasons for doing so.”
“As the situation is now, it is left for the Chairman (Ganduje) to tell us whether he wants to retain his position or not, but you cannot rule out external forces that may want to upstage him.
“According to our party constitution, the president is the leader of the party, and all happenings within the party will be brought to him.”
“Therefore, as of today the chairmanship position of our great party is not vacant, but I can’t predict what will happen tomorrow,” he noted.
Meanwhile, some promoters of good governance in Nigeria have condemned the manner in which political parties edge out their leaders, saying the development is destroying democracy and enthroning mediocrity.
The Executive Director of Indomitable Youth Organisation, a group advocating for good governance, Bright Oniovokukor, argued that politicians upstage their leaders in order to actualize their selfish political ambition, noting that the planned removal of Ganduje was not unconnected with the 2027 general elections.
Oniovokukor said, “The removal of party chairmen and other executive officers by APC and other political parties in Nigeria is a function of their internal crisis especially when elections are coming up. One negative aspect of Nigerian politicians is that they put their personal interest above collective interest and so, when they are exhibiting their personal interest, they really don’t care about what the world is saying or about what the implication is, otherwise, if at a party level which is a smaller subset of a national system, the structure put in place, they cannot nurture it, when they now hold political office, you will still see that they will want to do something in their own way.
“This obnoxious and clandestine removal of party chairmen is something that should be condemned in its entirety because there is an agreed tenure and everybody should be allowed to go through their tenure. If anybody should be removed for one reason or the other, the process of removal is also clearly stated in their constitution but unfortunately, they don’t follow it and it is not peculiar to APC.
“Ordinarily, it is the duty of party leaders to work and ensure that the party emerges as a ruling party either at local government, state or even at national level but when they now come with unclean hands, how can they do better in the offices they occupy?”
He added, “It is those who act like godfathers that want to use their interest to override the interest of other persons and if this thing also plays out, when these politicians are occupying offices, they will still follow the dictates of godfathers and these godfathers create crisis for these politicians.
“We just finished the 2023 elections last year but politicians are already planning for 2027 and they want to get tickets of the party by all means and in doing that, they throw caution to the wind, forgetting that they are supposed to put legacies in place that would help. So, removing party leaders in this manner is condemnable. If it is their internal crisis, they should be able to be mature enough to settle their internal crisis without bringing it up to the public display.
“Like, we have the Labour Party in court now because of the issue of National Chairman, it is not the best.”
A seasoned political scientist and APC stalwart, Moyo Jaji, in his explanation for the reason the APC sacks its national chairmen before the end of their respective tenures, said it had to do with the way the party was formed.
Jaji said smaller parties came together to form the APC so that they could give the PDP a run for their money in the 2015 general elections.
“So you have a setting where several interests coalesced just to ease the PDP out of governance. But that does not mean that they will of necessity forget about their own initial agenda.
“So, what we are having now is a coalition of conspiracy theorists coming together to effect changes as and when due,” he added.
Whether he thought Ganduje would go the way of his predecessors, Jaji said no one could say for sure.
“No one can say categorically that Ganduje will not get away with all the allegations leveled against him and no one can say he can get away with it, because this is Nigeria.
“All you need is a fanciful lawyer, as Mario Puzo the novelist put it, to stand up to bring out some arguments or a technicality before a judge and the man would go scot-free.
“And there is a presumption in law that a man is presumed innocent until proven otherwise by a court of competent jurisdiction.
“So, based on that, I want to believe that they have not found anything concrete against Ganduje other than the rumours we heard.
“If he is that guilty, they should take him to court and find him guilty, then thereafter, all his political ambition would be in tatters,” Jaji noted.
About who should be the real leader of the party between the National Chairman and the President, Jaji said, “About a national chairman being the leader, it is a theoretical consideration that in practice cannot be.
“It is just like being told that the Governors are the Chief Security Officers of their respective states when we know for a fact that the Commissioners of Police and other ancillary security agencies are in charge of security in every particular state.
“Anybody who occupies an appointive position can be removed any time inasmuch as it is done in accordance with the constitution of the party.”
“So, when we now talk about the President and the Chairman of a party, you know that the Nigerian constitution has given the President a lot of powers that are not stated but we all know they are there.”
“The President has the power to make appointment, disburse money. He can use that influence to undermine the chairman of the party who by practice is supposed to be the father of all,” he explained.
Concerning a possible replacement for Ganduje and who that might be, Jaji opted to wash his hands off mentioning names.
He however said the President had a lot of influence to determine who the next chairman would be.
He however added, “But I don’t know who the President prefers now or doesn’t like.
“So, it will be very unfair on my part to say it will be so and so person that will be the next chairman because I don’t even know how the party is run anyway.”
On what next for Ganduje, Jaji said if his people, the Kanawa or people of Kano State, did not find anything wrong with him and support him, there was nothing anyone could do about him.
Ganduje is facing criminal charges at the Kano State High Court, brought by the state government. A fresh N52 billion fraud allegation has also been levelled against him with graphic details of alleged diverted funds under his watch flooding the social media.
Though a member of the NWC of the party was quoted to have said that there were no plans to oust the national chairman, our correspondents gathered that party members were getting ready for political activities that would lead to his probable replacement.
Recall that some demonstrators had, some weeks ago, stormed the party secretariat, chanting solidarity songs and displaying banners that read ‘Return APC National Chairmanship to North-Central’ and ‘Dr Ganduje, kindly resign to face your prosecution in Kano.’
Amid the protest, a former APC chairmanship aspirant from the same region, Muhammad Etsu, filed a legal injunction to stop the former Kano Governor from parading himself as national chairman.
According to him, the seat of the party leadership should be allowed to remain in the North Central instead of the North West.
