- Kana said no party organ has the right to suspend any member except the NWC
- A Federal High Court in Kano also issued an ex parte order temporarily halting the execution of the suspension
Abdulkarim Kana, the APC’s National Legal Adviser, claims that only the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) can suspend its National Chairman, Abdullahi Ganduje.
Kana was interviewed for Channels Television’s Politics Today on Monday.
He was reacting to Ganduje’s recent controversial suspension by various factions in his ward.
The two factions of the Ganduje ward had suspended Ganduje’s membership for alleged corruption, among other offences, during his tenure as Kano governor.
However, the APC’s State Working Committee in Kano quickly overturned the suspension and imposed disciplinary measures on the ward executives.
A Federal High Court in Kano also issued an ex parte order temporarily halting the execution of the suspension until the case.
A Kano State High Court judge who earlier upheld Ganduje’s suspension also vacated the order suspending the ex-Kano governor as the National Chairman of the APC.
On Monday, Kana said no party organ has the right to suspend any member except the NWC.
According to the party’s constitution, he said that before such action could be carried out, all procedures must have been followed.
“All those procedures must be exhausted for such penalties to be imposed, but as a penalty pending completion of an investigation, no organ of the APC has the power to suspend any member pending investigation except the national working committee,” he said.
While labelling those who suspended Ganduje as “random individuals”, he insisted that they were not members of the ruling party.
He said, “I knew about some random individuals. They are not ward leaders of Ganduje ward, and they are not ward leaders of anywhere. That is not what leaders are going to hear. That we have established. That was why, from the very beginning, when this information became known to us, we first investigated, and we’ll have a mechanism within the party to confirm when there are such claims.
“It’s a serious claim that an organ of the party would make such a daring decision. We conducted our investigations, and it didn’t take long for us to establish that the purported individuals who were said to have suspended the national chairman are not even members of the party’s board committee in Ganduje ward and are not members of any of the ward excos, as we know.
“My office decided to go beyond just receiving reports from the respective organs regarding the claim’s authenticity. We asked the state working committee to accompany the ward excos members to Abuja so we could interview them, and we did. To our surprise, I insisted they come with their identity and voter cards.
“And when they came, we matched their faces against the ID cards and their names, and we discovered that those who had appeared on television, making claims that those names belong to them, were not, and that is how serious this matter is.
“That was why we did not waste time bringing in the security operatives and the agencies to investigate why those individuals would make such claims. They are imposters. That’s exactly what they are. We also received a specific complaint, which was addressed to the police from the authentic ward excos of the party, and I think the matter is currently before the police for investigation.”