*reveals mind blowing facts of alterations of congress delegates
By; JACOB ONJEWU DICKSON
A Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Adamawa State, Alhaji Mahmud Sali Yunusa has predicated the downfall of the party in 2023 over the political crisis rocking the local government areas of Mubi South and Mubi North.
According to him the reason is not farfetched from the last wards and local government congresses of the party.
He expressed worries that the outcome of the party’s Congresses in the two sister LGAs is worrisome as some few individuals hijacked the whole process without carrying critical stakeholders along.
He revealed that the uncontrollable crisis within the APC in Mubi North and South LGAs will certainly consume the entire party, if something fast and urgent is not done by the party’s leadership at the national level in 2023.
Yunusa, a former commissioner of the immediate past APC government under Senator Muhammadu Umaru Jibrilla Bindow’s administration while giving his facts on what led to the brewing crisis, said the purveyors of the crisis have resorted inhiring “mercenary journalists” to malign some individuals as a means of masking their illegalities.
According to him, the respected National Chairman of the party has seen through the smokescreen and has set up a committee to wade into the matter which he prayed should yield a faster and positive outcome.
“The crisis was triggered by the attempts to control the ward and local government congresses by some elements within the hierarchy of the party through very dubious and unwholesome means.
“Some of them went about it by dropping the names of highly placed persons in Abuja as being the masterminds of the project.
“The executors of the unholy agenda claimed that they are on a mission to control the party structure with a view to giving one of the gubernatorial aspirants seeking to fly the flag of the party an advantage.
“Recently, they embarked on a concerted media propaganda distorting the facts of the matter and claiming that a particular member of the National Assembly is responsible for the crisis and that a former national officer of the party who holds no office at present, has declared that the said National Assembly member will be expelled from the party.
“The mercenary journalists hired have been drumming this false narrative continuously as if that will mask the facts of the illegalities committed by the purveyors of the crisis,” Yunusa said.
While calling on all critical stakeholders from the national, state, local government areas down to the ward levels is to mediate and fashion out ways to resolve the issues Yunusa stated the fact of the matter as follows:
“On the 31st of August 2021, successful ward congresses were conducted in the two local government areas of Mubi North and South. The process which spilled over to the 1st of September in Mubi South had INEC and security agencies as observers as demanded by the Electoral act. All went well and the resultant results were copied the electoral body.
“The national secretariat sent an Appeal Committee to dispense with appeals arising from disputes within the contest. No such disputes were reported, and all went well.
“However, a few days after such a successful exercise, a group of persons acting purportedly on orders from above and working with another member of the National Assembly, sat somewhere in Yola or Abuja and doctored the list.
“Thus, the outcome was changed with many elected persons removed including some ward chairmen in both Mubi North and South. The dubious process was done so unintelligently that “men” were used to replace women as Woman Leader and people over 60s were made youth leaders.
“Most major stakeholders protested these dubious omissions and insertions of unelected persons in the list. All appeals and entreaties to revert to the status quo was rebuffed by the perpetrators of the act. One of them even bragged that to reverse the changes they made to the list is the same as raising the dead back to life.
“In Mubi South in particular, this dubious and distorted list was used to swear in unelected persons into office to the exclusion of duly elected persons. This was the scenario leading to the Local Government Congress of 4th October 2021.”
Yunusa also revealed that In the case of the local government congresses, some strange things began to happen:
“The officials of the state chapter of the party began to manipulate the process from inception by hoarding the forms, selecting people they want to anoint and insisting that they are the only ones that can determine outcomes.
“In Mubi North they held a stakeholders’ meeting to try and address these issues but the errand boys of the purveyors of illegality refused to concede that the process be subjected to democratic norms.
“In Mubi South, an aggrieved chairmanship aspirant felt so frustrated by the process that he went to court and obtained an injunction to stop the process.
“On the 4th of August 2021, while the Mubi North delegates were assembled at the designated venue of the congress waiting for the electoral officials to come, they were told that some powers residing in Yola had conducted the congress on their behalf and that a circus show was held somewhere to entertain some patrons.
“In Mubi South because of the Court Injunction, no one expected a congress to be held. However, the powers that be felt that they were above the laws of the land, they asked their cohorts to hold a circus show in one school in Mubi South while they conducted their congress in Yola.
“What they didn’t count on in all of this is that the roles of INEC and security agencies in the process goes beyond ceremonial attendance, for INEC its statutory. And both agencies wrote that no such congress took place in the two local government areas.
“Now with this scenario and the documents from the police and INEC, any further process undertaken by these fake officials and delegates including nomination of candidates for elections can be nullified by any competent court of law and no amount of blackmailing by mercenary journalists can change that.
“The APC in Adamawa State has no option than to redress this brigandage or the Zamfara and Rivers treatment awaits the party in 2023,” he warned.
