Fresh facts have emerged on why the All Progressives Congress APC National chairman, Senator Abdullahi Adamu was conspicuously absent during a crucial meeting between President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the 1999 set of Governors in the Aso Rock presidential villa earlier in the week, IgbereTV has learned.
Impeccable Presidency sources on Friday revealed to WorldViewAfrica that the National chairman was duly invited to the meeting but he declined.
Both Tinubu and Adamu are members of the set of Governors, which was the first set of elected Governors of the current democratic dispensation, also known as the Fourth Republic. They both served for two terms (1999-2007) in Lagos and Nasarawa states respectively.
Among the 36 governors 10 are deceased. They are Abubakar Abu Hashidu (Gombe); Chinwoke Mbadinuju (Anambra); Diepreye Alamieyeseigha (Bayelsa); Mala Kachalla (Borno); Umaru Musa Yar’adua (Katsina); Abubakar Audu (Kogi); Mohammed Lawal (Kwara); Abdulkadir Kure (Niger); Adebayo Adefarati (Ondo) and Lam Adesina (Oyo).
Only 17 governors attended the meeting with the president. Those in attendance at the meeting were the chairman of the group and former governor of Edo State, Lucky Igbinedion; James Ibori (Delta), Donald Duke (Cross River), Niyi Adebayo (Ekiti), Orji Uzor Kalu(Abia), and Sam Egwu (Ebonyi).
Others were Chimaroke Nnamani (Enugu), Ibrahim Saminu Turaki ( Jigawa), Adamu Muazu (Bauchi), Obong Victor Attah (Akwa Ibom), Olusegun Osoba (Ogun), Bisi Akande (Osun), Ahmad Yerima (Zamfara), Jolly Nyame (Taraba), Attahiru Bafarawa (Sokoto) and Joshua Dariye (Plateau).
According to WorldViewAfrica, when asked why Adamu, who is the National Chairman of the president’s party was absent, a senior presidential aide said the invitation was sent to him but no reason was given as to why he couldn’t attend.
Several calls made to Adamu’s mobile number were not answered as to why he didn’t attend the meeting.
However sources said the relationship between the embattled national chairman and the president had been fractured even before the outcome of the presidential primary of the party in June last year.
IgbereTV recalls that Adamu had publicly endorsed immediate past Senate President, Ahmad Lawan as the consensus candidate of the APC, a move which many stakeholders of the party rejected.
Speaking in a recent interview on Arise TV, monitored by IgbereTV on whether he regretted his decision to support Lawan, Adamu said ” think that’s a soft selling point for you media people. It is true that at the time that I made a presentation to the National Working Committee (NWC), the name of Senator Ahmed Lawan was thrown up”.
“That was before the convention. So many things took place between then and the actual date of the convention and you saw what culminated in the convention unanimously. I was there and I led the convention of the party.
“A day after the convention, I took the entire working committee to his (Tinubu’s) house in Asokoro and assured him of our support and said we will stand shoulder to shoulder with him and ensure that the mandate was sold properly to the people of Nigeria. We won the election. Instead of being praised, we are vilified,” he said.
According to WorldViewAfrica, the National Working Committee (NWC) led by Adamu is also polarised as the National Vice Chairman (North-West), Salihu Moh. Lukman, in an interview this week said Adamu willfully refused to extend financial support to President Tinubu in the build-up to the 2023 general elections.
There are reports that a vote of no confidence may be passed on Adamu at the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting scheduled to hold next week.
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