The National Legal Adviser of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abdulkarim Kana, has said that only the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) has the power to suspend its National Chairman, Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje.
Kana spoke on Monday night on Channels Television’s ‘Politics Today’, which was monitored by our Correspondent.
The ruling party’s top official was reacting to the recent controversial suspension of Ganduje, by different factional excos of his Ganduje Ward in Dawakin Tofa LGA of Kano State.
The two factions of the Ganduje Ward had suspended the membership of Dr. Ganduje for alleged corruption, among other offences, during his tenure as governor of Kano State.
However, the State Working Committee of the APC in Kano State swiftly nullified the suspension and took disciplinary actions against the errant ward executives.
A Federal High Court in Kano also issued an ex-parte order temporarily halting the implementation of the suspension until the case is heard and determined.
A Kano State High Court judge who earlier upheld Ganduje’s suspension also vacated the order suspending the former Kano State governor as the National Chairman of the APC.
However, speaking on Monday on the TV programme, Kana said no organ of the party has the right to suspend any member except the NWC.
He said, according to the party’s constitution, before such action could be carried out, all procedures must have been followed.
“All those procedures must be exhausted for such penalties to be imposed but as a penalty pending completion of an investigation, no organ of the APC has the power to suspend any member pending investigation except the national working committee,” he said.
While labelling those that suspended Ganduje as “random individuals”, he insisted that they were not members of the ruling party.
He said: “…I knew about some random individuals. They are not ward leaders of Ganduje ward and they are not ward leaders of anywhere then not what leaders are going to hear. That, we have established. And that was why, from the very beginning, when this information became known to us, the first thing we did was investigate and we’ll have a mechanism within the party to confirm when there are such claims.
“It’s a serious claim. That an organ of the party would take such a daring decision. We conducted our investigations and it didn’t take long for us to establish that the purported individuals who were said to have suspended the national chairman are not even members of the board committee of the party in Ganduje ward and are not members of any of the ward excos as we know.
“My office decided to go beyond just receiving reports from the respective organs as to the authenticity of the claim. We asked the state working committee to come along with the ward excos members to Abuja for us to interview them and we did and to our surprise, I insisted they should come with the identity cards and their voters cards.
“And when they came, we matched their faces against the ID cards and their names and we discovered that those who had appeared on television, making claims that those names belong to them were not and that is how serious this matter is.
“And that was why we did not waste time in bringing in the security operatives and the agencies to carry out investigations as to why those individuals would make such claims. They are imposters. That’s exactly what they are. And we also received a specific complaint, which was addressed to the police from the authentic ward excos of the party, and I think the matter is currently before the police for investigations.”
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