APC group suspends Anambra chairman

A group within the Anambra State Chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has suspended its chairman, Chief Basil Ejidike.

Announcing the suspension, a stakeholder of the party, Okonkwo Okom, at a press conference in Awka, the Anambra State capital on Thursday, said Ejidike was suspended because he refused to convene a state congress of the party to tackle pressing and urgent matters, despite repeated demands to do so as stipulated by the party’s constitution.

Okom disclosed that the state chapter of the APC jointly convened by not less than two-thirds of the members of the state executive committee and not less than two-thirds of the 21 Local Government Area Chairmen of the APC with the mandate of the 326 Ward Chairmen in the state decided Ejidike’s fate.

According to him, Ejidike was suspended from office as the Caretaker Chairman of the APC in the state, pending his appearance before a Disciplinary/Fact-Finding Committee of the Party.

He added that the next most senior available official of the party in the state has been mandated to convene an emergency meeting of the State Executive Committee in consultation with the leader of the party in Anambra State, Dr Chris Ngige, within the next 14 days from the date thereof to discuss the modalities for strengthening and repositioning the party and for moving the party forward in the state.

The statement read: “That Mr Basil Ejidike shall be referred to the Disciplinary/Fact-Finding Committee of the party in the state as prescribed by the APC constitution to answer to charges of abuse of power and office, diversion and conversion of party property, flagrant sabotage, subversion, and breach of the party’s constitution, insubordination, and disrespect to the Office and person of the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria, embezzlement, and misappropriation of party’s funds, among other charges.

Read also: Court unseats Anambra APC chairman

“That as required by the party’s constitution, these resolutions shall be immediately transmitted to the National Caretaker and Extra-Ordinary Convention Planning Committee for immediate implementation.”

Meanwhile, Ejidike described the suspension as laughable.

According to him, the people that suspended him were not members of the party, rather, renegades who left the party after its primaries in June, noting that they cannot suspend him.

He said: “As I’m talking to you I’m at the National Secretariat of our party in Abuja. Their claim is laughable. What is the position of the person that convened the meeting that sacked me? They are trying to see if they can instigate a crisis in our party; that is their only interest.”

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