The crisis within the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Niger State has deepened following the detention of the party chairman, Engineer Mohammad Jubrin Imam, over an alleged misappropriation of the party’s fund.
Imam was said to have been detained on Tuesday and released on Wednesday.
The Police Public Relations Officer in the state, ASP Wasiu Abiodun, when contacted, confirmed that the police invited Imam over the petition sent to the command but he did not confirm if he was detained.
Efforts to get the chairman’s reaction was unsuccessful as his phone number was not connecting.
However, the party’s publicity secretary, Mr Idris Abinni, told our correspondent that the chairman was resting because he had a sleepless night at the detention.
He promised to get back to our correspondent.
The allegation
The party’s financial secretary, Idris Muhammed, wrote a petition to the Niger State Police Command on alleged misappropriation of the party’s fund by the Chairman.
But the Chairman, during a press conference in Minna, insisted that every money spent by the party had been adequately documented and that no money was lost.
He said: “No money is lost.
“We have been running the system in the most transparent manner.
“In fact, we run it as if it is a ministry.
“The Party has three signatories and the Financial Secretary, who wrote that petition, is one of the signatories and he has been the one writing the cheques and he has been part of all our activities and meetings.
“How then did we sideline him?”
Imam said a five-man committee has been set up to give him a fair hearing and submit their report in one week.
‘Party chairman should go on suspension’
Reacting to the chairman’s claim, the financial secretary called for the suspension of the chairman, secretary and treasurer of the party, saying they cannot be the judge in their own case.
He said he doesn’t have access to some accounts of the party because the Chairman allegedly stopped the banks from alerting him.
“On average, we generated over 300 million during the council elections, that money was squandered without record.
“I don’t have any single record, not a single paper to show what it was spent on.
“Between 30 August 2019 to October 9th the sum of N81.1million was withdrawn from the party’s account without any record.
“We also got N40 million from the national body, which was paid into the chairman’s account, no record on what it was spent on,” he said.
He insisted that the only cheque he is allowed to sign are the ones less than N500, 000 while he does not have access to other financial transactions of the party.
The Auditor of the party, Adamu Baba Aliyu, corroborated the financial secretary’s claims, adding that Imam invited an external auditor to audit the account of the party without his (internal auditor) consent.
