The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, on Thursday dismissed reports that he replaced six suspended departmental directors at the secretariat with his friends and allies.
Adamu made the clarification at a media parley with journalists at the party headquarters in Abuja on Thursday.
The six affected directors namely Elder Anietie Offong (Welfare); Bartholomew I. Ugwoke (Research); Abubakar Suleiman (Finance); Dr Suleiman Abubakar (Administration); Salisu Dambatta (Publicity) and Dare Oketade, Legal Head, were allegedly accused of mismanaging N7.7bn.
Adamu had on April 22 ordered the directors to proceed on ‘compulsory annual leave.’
Although the former Nasarawa governor promised to run a staff audit, the result of the exercise which showed an over-bloated workforce was not implemented.
Instead, the party chairman consequently set up a investigative panel headed by an ex-Governor of Jigawa State, Ali Saad Birnin Kudu to study the handing-over notes of the defunct Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee.
It was the fallout of the committee’s recommendations that compelled Adamu to place the departmental directors and head of legal services on an indefinite suspension.
Defending his action in a media parley on Thursday, Adamu disclosed that the move was necessitated by the need to sanitise the system.
This is even as he denied allegation that the new replacement were his cronies.
He said, “That the report is false. The fact of the matter is, go through the secretariat, there is not one person since we came in here that is my blood relation. Not one, whether primary or part of my extended family.
“It is a fallacy (that I have my people working here). In fact, when we came here, it was to reorganize and reconstitute the party. You don’t see the party in a state of mess and look the other way just because you want to be decent and not offend anybody.”
While claiming that he met a cesspool of corruption, tardy officials and a register containing over 200 names including ghost workers, the APC chairman swore that it was not in his DNA to overlook such anomalies.
“We came and found the party where people are fixing all manners of things. We had a bill of N7.7bn to settle on legal matter alone. We came to find that here everybody was like me, on his own. No control, no system, no due process. Everybody doing what he wanted to do. It is just because you don’t want to be accused of anything that you will allow that kind of people.
“My DNA has terrible allergy for that. I am sure most, if not all, my members in the NWC share in this. Of course, every situation of change has a victim of its own and ours is not an exception. And we didn’t do anything with bias or prejudice. The main thing is the interest of the party.’
“Recently, we tried to introduce table payment. If you are a member of this chapel, you know we don’t have 200 people working for us here. But if you go through the payroll, we are over 200 people. Who are they? How did they come up on their bill? What are they doing for us? Where are their letters of appointment? What condition of service do they have?
“You don’t, because you are afraid of negative media review, ignore this. People went to the market square saying we are arranging salaries but can’t pay. That is very far from the truth. We met and paid some arrears when we came in. I don’t have any qualms about this. We did everything in good faith,” he said.
