Leadership Crisis Hits Arewa Group, ADSI, Over BoT Membership

A leadership crisis is brewing in the Arewa Development Support Initiative (ADSI) over the membership of its Board of Trustees (BoT).

ADSI, a brainchild of Khuraira Musa, a United States-based Nigerian entrepreneur, was incorporated in 2019 to provide skills and empowerment to less-privileged youths and women across Northern Nigeria.

The Initiative, which has membership across the 19 Northern States, has empowered thousands of Northern youths and women through the provision of vocational skills and start-up capital.

It was gathered that the crisis got to a head when a BoT member of ADSI who left unceremoniously in 2020 returned to the association.

Consequently, the returning BoT member created a faction within the BoT members, sidelining the President and Founder of the initiative, Ms Khuraira Musa, and two other BoT members, who protested against the illegality.

The factional BoT members accused the founder of conniving with top officials of Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) to alter some names of BoT members without following due process.

The founder and the two founding members were taken down as administrators of a WhatsApp platform created for the BoT members.

However, denying the allegation through a statement on Tuesday, Ms Musa described the claims against her as untrue and uncharitable.

According to her, the changes conducted in the CAC were carried out with the approval of all the BoT members of the initiative as usually the norm.

Ms. Musa said: “In 2020, some members of the BoT left the organization unceremoniously. We, therefore, unanimously agreed that these members be removed from the register of the organization in the Corporate Affairs Commission during our Face-to-face meeting in 2020 in Kaduna.

“We discussed it on our WhatsApp chats later in 2021 which is our medium of communication and finally got to it in 2023 because we needed to get our paperwork in order. The changes were effected officially. So, I believe that the sponsors of the publication are economical with the truth.

“I never forged dates and signatures of any trustee, neither did I alter the constitution of ADSI to my favour,” Ms Musa stressed.

“Whatever was done was to protect the organization and its members. I don’t think I will birth an idea and also destroy it,” the founder added.