By Joseph Nashima
The crisis rocking the All Progressives Congress, APC in Benue State over the governorship ticket took an irreconcilable dimension in the last couple of days when the disputed candidate Hyacinth Alia failed to get the trio of Chief Barnabas Gemade, Chief Mike Aondoakaa and Prof Terhemba Shija to withdraw their lawsuits against him.
Alia and Senator George Akume had initiated the idea to plead with the aggrieved governorship aspirants of the party who are in court challenging the yahoo yahoo primaries that produced the suspended priest as candidate.
Our impeccable sources within the APC camp however revealed that when Alia met with Gemade, Aondoakaa and Shija to beg them to forgive him and withdraw their court cases, they gave him conditions that they knew would discourage him from his plea bargain.
According to the sources, the Gemade, Aondoakaa and Shija camps demanded that if they must withdraw their cases, Alia should promise that if elected, he would allow them appoint their own people into key positions like BIRS, Bureau of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs as well as SUBEB.
On hearing the demands, Alia reportedly sprang to his feet and shouted “So with what do you want me to run the government if you take away all the juicy positions? I won’t accept this! And that was the end of the meeting. He later told his inner team that Gemade, Aondoakaa and Shija can go to hell or the Hague, if they wish.
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In the case of Akume, the minister met with Chief Gemade to plead with him to withdraw his case against Alia but there too, he met a brick wall. In order to make Akume to stop disturbing him, Gemade reportedly demanded that unless there is a signed agreement that he would be given a federal ministerial appointment, he wouldn’t withdraw his suit against the suspended priest. Akume too became furious and told Gemade that his demand was unacceptable because his (Akume’s) target is to either become Secretary to the Government of the Federation or get a grade A ministry, if APC retains power at the federal level.
Meanwhile, the recent judgment in the senatorial case instituted by APC against Labour Party in Cross River State where the court held that a member of a political party or the party itself has the locus (right) to challenge the nomination of another party has sent jitters down the spines of APC members in Benue State.
Their only hope has been that if they succeed in pleading with Gemade, Aondoakaa and Shija to drop their cases against Alia, PDP would have nothing to hold on to. But the latest judgment over the matter of locus has terribly unsettled APC in Benue state, as they now know that they have a big problem on their hands. PDP is in court against the yahoo yahoo primaries and the case looks really bad for APC.
Alia is reported to be considering another trip to Kaduna state Governor Nasir El-Rufai and Katsina state Governor Bello Masari who are his chief sponsors. His only option now is to get more money and try to pay his way through the court cases, a move that is also looking bleak for him as the justices handling the cases against him are men of proven high integrity.
