The North East National Vice Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Comrade Mustapha Salihu has found himself in the middle of a controversial suspension by his ward.
After a similar ‘suspension’ over the weekend of the party’s governorship candidate, Senator Aishatu Ahmed Binani, this is the second chieftain of the party to be so treated in Adamawa State within a couple of days.
Following alleged “gross abuse of office, conspiracy and acts typical of anti-party”, the leadership of the APC in Rumde Ward of Yola North local government area, announced via a statement made public late on Sunday that Mustapha Salihu had been suspended from the party.
In the suspension letter addressed to the National Chairman of the party through the acting state chairman and the chairman APC Yola North local government area and jointly signed by the ward’s vice chairman, the secretary and 16 other executive members of the party in the ward, the ward executives wished that the suspension would be favourably acted upon.
As in the case of Binani, however, the state leadership of the party has come out to declare Salihu’s suspension null and void.
The Adamawa State Working Committee (SWC) of the APC described the said suspension of Salihu as illegal.
The State Secretary of the Party, Dr. Raymond Chidama, in a statement obtained Monday morning, said faceless persons were being used by the enemies of the party to disrupt the chances of the party winning the coming elections.
Reports state that in apparent resolve to pave the way for Salihu’s suspension, the Rumde Ward APC executives had first suspended their ward chairman, Abdulkadir Abdullahi who, it is now obvious, resisted the plan against Salihu.
The embattled ward chairman has come out to condemn his suspension, insisting that he remains the chairman and that Mustapha Salihu has done nothing to merit suspension.
Condemning the suspension of the Rumde Ward Party Chairman, the party’s state secretary, Raymond declared that the “interloping attitude” of the Rumde Ward executives is unconstitutional and of no effect.