The National Working Committee of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has appointed and inaugurated a seven-man Caretaker Committee for the party’s Benue State chapter.
The caretaker committee, which is said to be a unity, has the Hon. Benjamin Omale as chairman, Professor Bem Angwe as Secretary, and the Hons. James Ornguga, Terhemen Ngbea, Helen Agaigbe, Ali Francis Adah, and Richard Mzungweve as members.
Inaugurating the committee during the NWC meeting at the party’s national secretariat in Abuja on Wednesday, the APC national chairman, Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, charged the panel with six months tenure to work on the unity and reconciliation in the party.
Ganduje, while lamenting the problem in Benue and some state chapters of the party, said: “The problem we are having in the state is factions, counter-factions; litigations, counter-litigations. The National Working Committee will not allow that to continue. The party is an institution; you must be united.
“So to solve the problem, we followed our Constitution, and therefore, the National Working Committee has today dissolved the Executive Committee, and at the same time, the National Working Committee has approved the constitution of a seven-man Caretaker Committee to run the affairs of the party for the next six months.
“Also, since you are going for local government election, and the party is the only organ that can certify the candidature of any contestant, therefore you are saddled with the responsibility of conducting primaries for those who intend to become chairmen and councillors of their local government areas. We urge you to unite and continue dialogue with major stakeholders so that we can bring all of you together so you can work together.”
In his acceptance speech on behalf of the committee, the chairman, Omale, he pledged to unite the party in the state as mandated by the NWC to advance the APC in Benue.
Meanwhile, a Benue State High Court had ordered APC not to remove Hon. Austin Agada, the chairman of the state chapter.
A copy of the order, via an ex parte order granted by Justice Theresa Igoche in motion no MH /1585m/2024, was made available to journalists at the party’s national secretariat in Abuja earlier on Wednesday.
The court mainly directed the Ganduje-led NWC to remove the Agada State Working Committee once its four-year tenure expires.
The Judge, while granting the ex parte application by Agada and eight others, restrained APC, either by itself, its privies, assigns, staff, officers, servants, agents, representatives, or whomsoever, howsoever described, from removing, changing, replacing or howsoever terminating his tenure and other members of the Benue State Working Committee of the Respondent until the expiration of their four-year term in office pending the determination of the motion on Notice.
“I have looked at the processes filed along with the application, particularly Exhibit MT “1” attached to the affidavit in support, and I am satisfied that the application has merit,” the judge declared while granting the prayers of Agada. In the circumstances, I now grant the application as prayed.”
The Judge thereby ordered that the order be served on the APC immediately, along with the motion on Notice fixed for hearing on the 28th of this month.
Speaking with journalists after submitting the ex parte order before the inauguration, Agada insisted that his EXCO was elected for four years and cannot be removed before the expiration of its tenure, more so that there is a court injunction to that effect.
“I’m here to submit a court order by Hon. Justice Theresa Igoche restraining the National Working Committee (NWC) restraining them or their agents or anybody to terminate the tenure of the All Progressives Congress in Benue State. We were elected for four years, and we are not pre-empting them but, of course, in a minimal amount of rumour because sometimes there have been some movements by the Governor and his agents to dissolve the State Working Committee, which I think is not fair by all standards.
“Recall that the crisis as to my purported removal started as far back as February, which immediately the NWC sat and set aside that purported removal or suspension and also gave the caption that Austine Agada remains the bonafide chairman of APC on January 31, 2024.
“After that, they got a court injunction restraining me even when NWC squashed without using the party’s internal mechanism. The court, in its wisdom, led by the Chief Justice of Benue State, set aside that suspension. It is still valid in courts.
“They were angry and approached the Appeal Court, so the case is still in Appeal Court. I was surprised when the State Working Committee heard Benue State discuss the dissolution. We say no; the case is in the court.
“This is the first time I am talking to the press, or else I have refused to address the press on this issue. I don’t know what has become for a people that sacrificed a lot to bring in the governor of Benue today for him to be maltreating the party,” he said.
