The leadership of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) said it has not received any letter of suspension from the Board of Trustees of the body led by a former governor of Adamawa state, Admiral Murtala Nyako (rtd).
This follows the inauguration of a caretaker committee on Wednesday in Abuja by the Nyako-led board to oversee the affairs of the association.
In a swift reaction, the president of AFAN, Architect Kabiru Ibrahim, told Daily Trust in Abuja awhile ago that the purported suspension of the elected officials would not stand because the board did not meet to take the decision, adding that Nyako cannot single-handedly dissolve the elected officials without following due process even if there were petitions.
Nyako has been the chairman of the Board of Trustees of AFAN since its inception. Other members are Femi Coker (now late), Alhaji Shettima Mustafa who served both as former minister of Agriculture and Defence and Senator Abdullahi Adamu, who is the current Chairman, Senate Committee on Agriculture and a former governor of Nasarawa State (1999 to 2007).
Architect Kabiru said that Senator Adamu, a member of the board, was not aware of the decision.
He described the action as unlawful and unfortunate, which came at a time the association’s electoral committee was preparing to conduct elections across the states.
“We are now saying that the constitution does not empower him (Murtala Nyako) as the chairman of the Board of Trustees to do that. Two, you cannot truncate the tenure of a person who was elected without any reason and three, I cannot just hand over, there has to be an election for me to hand over to anybody, you cannot say this man is now the caretaker chairman and therefore I’m out,” he said.
Effort to reach Admiral Nyako (rtd) on the reason for the new development was not successful.
AFAN is a product of three farmers’ organisations led by Murtala Nyako, Alhaji Shettima Mustafa and late Femi Coker.
A former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, collapsed the three organisations into what is today AFAN and made Murtala Nyako the President while Shettima and Coker serve as 1st and 2nd vice president respectively.
AFAN has seen series of crises in the past due to leadership tussle involving some members of the board of trustees, leading to the emergence of factions.
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