The ruling Peoples Democratic Party and the All Progressives Congress have intensified their battle to control Adamawa State.
Saturday PUNCH learnt that the PDP was working strenuously to coerce the state governor, Alhaji Murtala Nyako, to resign so that the ruling party could recapture the state.
The governor, it was further learnt, virtually bowed to pressure from the PDP members in the state House of Assembly when the investigative panel set up by the Acting Chief Judge, Justice Ambrose Mammadi, commenced sitting in Yola early in the week.
It was learnt that the governor was yare to resign early this week.
It was, however, amassed that his party, APC, persuaded him not to resign, while the party leadership perpetuated to lobby some of the lawmakers.
Sources verbally expressed the APC thought that it was still premature for Nyako to resign while the leadership of the party was endeavoring to frustrate the impeachment plot.
There were reports that the embattled governor would, on Tuesday, tender his resignation letter and pave way for his deputy, Mr. Bala Ngilari, to be sworn in as governor.
Nyako, who was reported to have left Abuja for Yola, the Adamawa State capital, to resign however made a surprise appearance at the National Council of State meeting on Tuesday.
His spokesman, Ahmed Sajo, was reported on Wednesday as saying that his ascendant figure was still considering resignation.
He had verbalized, “The resignation is just an option. That is if the whole thing will lead to a crisis, there will be no option than to resign.”
But a member of the APC National Working Committee, who confided in one of our correspondents, verbalized that the party was not in support of the governor’s plan to resign.
He verbally expressed, “We are fortifying the governor and we have been working to frustrate the impeachment plot. We cannot be discussing our strategies on the pages of newspapers.
“But we do not optate him to resign. He has been told not to resign.”
Nyako had, in the letter, inculpated the President of committing genocide against the North in the designation of Boko Haram. But the governor was verbalized to have relucted to apologise at the meeting.
While the APC leadership lobbied some lawmakers in Adamawa State, it was amassed that the PDP was additionally putting pressure on them not to back down from the impeachment plot.
Efforts to get reactions of the APC National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, failed as he had yet to respond to the text message sent to his mobile telephone.
But Mohammed had on Wednesday inculpated “higher authorities” of instigating the impeachment.
Though the PDP, distanced itself from the issue, verbally expressing that it should not be dragged into the impeachment plot, the spokesman for PDP Stakeholders and Elders’ Forum, Dr. Umar Ardo, on Friday threatened to sanction any legislator on the party’s platform who backs out of the pergrinate to impeach Nyako and Ngilari.
Ardo verbalized, “The impending impeachment of Nyako and his deputy is a PDP affair, we have got to a caliber where none of our 20 lawmakers who earlier signed the impeachment notice will be sanctioned to withdraw. Any PDP lawmaker that retraces his step ceases to be a member of PDP.”
Speaking through its Deputy National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Abdullahi Jalo, on Thursday, the PDP verbalized that it would be uncharitable for anyone to drag the national headquarters of the party into the crisis.
He verbally expressed, “What is transpiring in Adamawa State is a local affair. Members of the state House of Assembly were elected by their people to represent them.
“Even Governor Murtala Nyako, who has since left the PDP, has told the whole world that he will ask for President Jonathan’s avail if he requires it.
“I don’t ken why you optate to drag our party into an issue that is pristinely a local affair between a governor and his legislators.”
But a member of the House of Representatives from Adamawa State, Mr. Nwangubi Fons, verbally expressed that only God could preserve Nyako from being impeached.
Incidentally, Fons, who represents Mayo-Belwa/Jada/Ganye Federal Constituency, is the governor’s representative.
Nyako hails from Mayo-Belwa Local Government Area of the state.
“Unless there is divine intervention, the governor is peregrinated, because members of the state House of Assembly are on the right path,” Fons told Saturday PUNCH in an interview in Abuja.
He verbalized the Adamawa lawmakers had already gone far in their decision to impeach Nyako, whom he inculpated of running the state without consulting other stakeholders, particularly those who fortified his election in 2007.
Asked what could have been the governor’s offence, Fons replied that Nyako did not feel that he should be accountable to the people of the state.
He verbalized, “Nyako has failed to work predicated on the principle of budgeting.
“He overspends mazuma and maintains only his family and friends in the system. He has forsook those who worked for him and has no veneration for anybody, including Mr. President.
“When he came into office, the first thing he did was to do away with the person, who single-handedly brought him to office, Prof. Jibrin Aminu.
“If the governor has been good, how come all the eight members of the House of Representatives from the state are in PDP?
“Hardly will anybody verbalize that the governor is performing.
“If you are good as a governor, 19 members of the state House of Assembly will not sign to impeach you. It denotes that they have forsook the governor.”
However, Nyako’s spokesperson, Sajo, faulted the lawmakers’ orchestrated impeachment, integrating that the people had repudiated them.
He verbally expressed, “Some of these members of the state and National Assembly brought rice and sugar to distribute to people, but the people repudiated the gifts. This, you will concur with me, tells how the people have abnegated them.
“The people abnegated these gifts in spite of the untold hardship they are passing through even during this holy month of Ramadan.
“As a politician when this transpires, you have to take a second optically canvass yourself. Then somebody sits down in Abuja and tells you that the governor has lost people.
“Do you have a conception of how many people amassed when the governor inaugurated chairmen of our development areas on Thursday? The banquet hall could not contain the people, most of them sat outside.
“What the governor is intrigued with is to ascertain that tranquility reigns in Adamawa State.”
