Abia faults Aba lawyers position on roads, insecurity

THE dust generated by the recent appointments of some members of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) as presidential aides appears far from settled as a group within the party has asked the National Chairman of the party, Edwin Ume-Ezeoke and others to relinquish the executive positions in the party.

The ANPP members under the aegis of The Integrity Group, at the weekend asked Ume-Ezeoke, the partys National Secretary, Said Umar Kumo, and Deputy Chairman (South), Ebutta Ayuk, to resign from the ANPP national executive.

Kumo and Ayuk were recently appointed as special advisers by President Umaru Musa YarAdua, in line with the Government of National Unity (GNU) pact the ANPP entered into with the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

The ANPP Integrity Group is led by former Kebbi State Deputy Governor, Sulaiman Mohammad Argungu.

However, the ANPP leadership has defended its action, saying it had not done anything wrong by accepting to serve in the PDP government. The partys National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Emma Eneukwu, in a chat with The Guardian in Abuja at the weekend, dismissed claims that the ANPP leadership had sold out.

He insisted that the participation of the ANPP in the GNU was to stabilise the polity and put the government in good stead to serve the nation.

It was learnt that the ANPP Integrity Group has perfected arrangements to oust the national leadership of the ANPP from office for allegedly selling out the opposition right of the party to the ruling PDP and allowing few individuals to benefit at the expense of the survival of the party.

The group accused Ume-Ezeoke, Kumo and former Zamfara State Governor, Ahmed Sani Yerima, of being moles planted by the PDP to destabilise the ANPP in return for lucrative appointments.

The group threatened to go to court if Ezeoke, Kumo, Ayuk did not resign their positions.

Argungu, who spoke with reporters yesterday in Abuja, said: The leadership of the party under Ezeoke has arrogated to itself the impression that it can act on behalf of all organs of the party, thus usurping the functions of some of the organs of the party by approbating and reprobating at will on issues affecting the party.

Our great party, the largest opposition party in Nigeria, is being dragged in the mud and is at the risk of total extinction through the concerted and deliberate acts of the leadership, which has become rudderless and is tossed around by whirlwinds engineered by the moles acting the script of the PDP, the group stated.

The group asked the ANPP National Executive Council (NEC) to withdraw the nomination of Kumo and Ayuk so that the party can deliberate on the matter afresh and carry all along.

Eneukwu, however said the ANPP executive was not behind the appointments, saying, they were done at the zonal level for the national executive to ratify.

His words: When this matter was brought by the president, we convened all necessary organs of the party and gave approval until it came to the National Executive Council (NEC), which gave its approval. Then we formed a sub-committee that shared these positions to the zones from where the nominations came from. So they are representatives of the zones. They are not representing the national secretariat, the National Working Committee (NWC) or the party.