The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Adams Oshiomhole has suddenly left Nigeria early Wednesday morning amidst his reported detention by the department of state security services, DSS, PoliticsNGR has learnt.
Oshiomhole was reportedly detained and grilled over the role he played in the primaries of the party. It was also gathered that Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi state secured bail for Oshiomhole from DSS after he underwent 9 hours of intense grilling from the security agency.
The DSS was prompted to pick up Oshiomhole after receiving numerous petitions accusing Oshiomhole of bribery and manipulating the APC Primaries. Most of the petitions were from Zamfara, Imo, Ogun and Niger states respectively.
The current crisis being faced by the party began after Oshiomhole marginalized the party’s National Working Committee (NWC), usurped its functions, relocated from the party’s national headquarters to his personal campaign secretariat at Asokoro and thereafter run the primaries with the cooperation of only four NWC members.
The chairman also delayed the appointment of screening and primary election committees for the states and insisted on centralizing it at national headquarters contrary to the previous practice of screening legislative aspirants in their states and governorship aspirants in the zonal offices.
In Imo state, Oshiomhole singlehandedly picked Alhaji Ahmed Gulak to head the Imo election committee despite protests that Gulak joined the party only this year and that he did so together with Chief Hope Uzodinma, a governorship aspirant in Imo State.
Gulak later disappeared from Owerri before the primaries were conducted and declared Uzodinma as the winner. Eight other committee members stayed behind and conducted the primaries, which were observed by INEC officials but the chairman insisted on upholding Gulak’s result, the sources said. Petitions soon flooded DSS and EFCC alleging that millions of dollars were spent by aspirants.
In Ogun State, petitioners accused the chairman of doing the bidding of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu to push aside Governor Ibikunle Amosun and his anointed candidate. Another petition from Zamfara State alleged that the messy APC primaries in that state were orchestrated by the national chairman who was bent on handing the party’s ticket to Malam Dauda Lawal. Several attempts to hold the primaries ended in chaos but Oshiomhole said in a letter to INEC that a consensus candidate was adopted in Zamfara State, a claim that Senator Kabiru Marafa publicly refuted.
A party source revealed that Oshiomhole orchestrated a crisis in the state with the intention of foisting the wife of the president’s brother as governorship candidate. He however backtracked and allowed Governor Mohammed Jibrilla Bindow to win the primaries.
There were similar problems in Bauchi, Niger and Enugu states with more petitioners alleging that bribery was responsible for the slipshod manner in which primaries were handled in those states.
President Muhammadu Buhari has also ordered that all the monies collected from various aspirants all over the country should be returned to them. Presidency officials were however not available to confirm or refute this claim.
