The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Abdullahi Adamu, has revealed that his predecessor and Yobe State Governor, Mai Mala Buni, left behind legal fees debts of N7.5 billion naira.
Mr Adamu made the revelation during a media parley with APC Media Corps at the party’s national secretariat in Abuja on Thursday while responding to allegations that he sacked all the directors of the party and appointed his kinsmen.
Raye24reporters reports that Mr Buni’s Caretaker and Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee [CECPC] was inaugurated on June 25, 2020, shortly after the dissolution of the Adams Oshiomole National Working Committee.
The committee was given the mandate to reconcile aggrieved party members and organise a national convention for the emergence of a new National Working Committee, NWC, within six months. However, the committee ended up spending 24 months in office.
But Mr Adamu, who assumed office in April, said he inherited a disorganized and corrupt system where due process was lacking.
Defending the allegations against him, the former Nasarawa State Governor noted that all decisions the current NWC took were in the interest of the party.
“It is a fallacy (that I have my people working here). In fact, when we came here, it was to reorganise 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.
“We came and found the party where people are fixing all manners of things. We had a bill of N7.5 billion to settle on legal matters alone. We came to find that here everybody was on his own. No control, no system and no due process.
“Everybody was doing what he wanted to do. It is just because you don’t want to be accused of anything that you will allow those kinds of people.
“My DNA has a terrible allergy to that. I am sure most, if not all, of my members in the NWC share in this. So we found the necessity to reorganise the centre and only God knows the extent of appreciation we probably have been won. 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.
“I know we will be abused and falsely accused but we are humans. I am not saying we don’t make mistakes. But the fact of the matter is that there is nothing we have done deliberately just to promote our own interests. We don’t do it. There is a lot of falsehood going on.”
Mr Adamu also said the payroll of the party was overbloated with mostly ghost workers.
“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 the bill? What are they doing for us? Where are their letters of appointments? What condition of service do they have?
“You don’t, because you are afraid of negative media reviews, 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
The APC chairman also confirmed that all presidential aspirants who contested the APC presidential primaries have resolved to work for the victory of the Bola Tinubu.
