Only NWC has power to suspend Ganduje, says APC legal adviser

The All Progressives Congress (APC) National Legal Adviser, Abdulkarim Kana, said only the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) has the authority to appoint its national chairman, Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje, to suspend.

Kana was speaking on Channels Television’s Politics Today program monitored by our correspondent on Monday evening.

The top official of the ruling party was reacting to the recent controversial suspension of Ganduje by various factional leaders of his Ganduje area in Dawakin Tofa LGA of Kano State.

The two factions of Ganduje Municipality had the membership of Dr. Ganduje suspended for alleged corruption and other offenses during his term as governor of Kano State.

However, the state working committee of the APC in Kano State immediately revoked the suspension and took disciplinary action against the erring station managers.

A Federal High Court in Kano also issued an amicable order temporarily suspending the implementation of the stay pending the hearing and determination of the case.

A Kano State High Court judge, who had earlier upheld Ganduje’s suspension, also set aside the order suspending the former Kano State governor as national chairman of the APC.

However, on Monday, Kana said on television that no organ of the party has the right to suspend a member except the NWC.

He said that according to the party’s constitution, all procedures must have been followed before such an action could be taken.

“All such procedures must be exhausted for such penalties to be imposed but as a penalty pending the completion of an investigation, no body of the APC has the power to suspend a member pending investigation except the National Working Committee,” he said.

While he described those who suspended Ganduje as “random people”, he insisted that they were not members of the ruling party.

He said: “…I knew about some random people. They are not community leaders of Ganduje community and they are not community leaders from anywhere other than what the leaders will hear. We discovered that. And that’s why, from the very beginning, when we became aware of this information, the first thing we did was investigate and we set up a mechanism within the party to confirm whether there were such allegations.

“It is a serious allegation. That a party body would make such a daring decision. We conducted our investigations and it didn’t take us long to discover that the people alleged to have suspended the state chairman are not even members of the party’s Executive Committee in Ganduje District and none of these members are Ward Excos as we know.

“My office has decided to go beyond merely receiving reports from the relevant organs on the authenticity of the claim. We asked the State Working Committee to come to Abuja with the community Excos members so that we could interview them, which we did and to our surprise, I insisted that they come with the identity cards and their voter cards.

“And when they came, we compared their faces with the IDs and their names and found that those who had appeared on television claiming that those names were theirs were not, and that is how serious the matter is.”

“And that is why we wasted no time in engaging the security forces and authorities to investigate why these individuals would make such claims. They are fraudsters. That’s exactly what they are. And we have also received a specific complaint made to the police by the authentic community members of the party and I think the matter is currently with the police for investigation.”