Only NWC has the power to suspend Ganduje – APC legal advisor

The National Legal Adviser of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abdulkarim Kana, says only the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) can suspend its National Chairman, Abdullahi Ganduje.

Kana spoke on Monday while appearing on the channel’s Politics Today television show.

He was reacting to the recent controversial suspension of Ganduje by various factionalists in his community.

The two factions of the community had suspended Ganduje’s membership over alleged corruption and other offenses during his tenure as governor of Kano State.

However, the APC state working committee in Kano immediately revoked the suspension and took disciplinary action against the station managers.

Similarly, a Federal Court in Kano issued an ex parte order temporarily suspending the implementation of the stay pending the hearing and determination of the case.

A Kano State High Court judge, who had earlier upheld Ganduje’s suspension, also set aside the order suspending the former Kano state governor as national chairman of the APC.

On Monday, Kana said no party organ has the right to suspend a member except the NWC.

He said that according to the party’s constitution, all procedures must have been followed before such an action could be taken.

“All such procedures must be exhausted for such penalties to be imposed but as a penalty pending the completion of an investigation, no body of the APC has the power to suspend a member pending an investigation except the National Working Committee,” he said.

While he described those who suspended Ganduje as “random people”, he insisted that they were not members of the ruling party.

He said: “It is a serious allegation. That a party body would make such a daring decision. We conducted our investigations and it didn’t take us long to discover that the people alleged to have suspended the state chairman are not even members of the party’s Executive Committee in Ganduje District and none of these members are Ward Excos as we know.

“My office has decided to go beyond merely receiving reports from the relevant organs on the authenticity of the claim. We asked the State Working Committee to come to Abuja with the community Excos members so that we could interview them and we did, to our surprise I insisted that they come with their identity cards and their voter cards.

“And when they came, we compared their faces with the IDs and their names and found that those who had appeared on television claiming that those names were theirs were not, and that is how serious the matter is.”

“And that is why we have wasted no time in engaging security forces and authorities to investigate why these individuals are making such claims,” he said.