The Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai says Mai Mala Buni, governor of Yobe State and now-ousted chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) caretaker committee was removed for failing to obey orders given to him by President Muhammadu Buhari and his colleagues.
El-Rufai disclosed this while speaking on Channels TV’s Politics Today show on Wednesday evening.
The governor also accused Buni of hiding a court document temporarily restraining the APC from holding its convention on March 26 until a substantive suit has been heard and determined by party leaders.
He said, “Buni has been removed. He will not return to the party as national chairman again. He can be back to his post as governor.
“The governors and President Buhari directed Buni to swear in state executives elected months ago but he never followed the order. The Governors’ Forum asked him to brief us, he didn’t. We didn’t know anything about the party. We agreed on zoning, he came out with rumour that the President had endorsed four people. We went back to the President but he said he had not done that.
“Mai Bala Buni hid vital information from us. An interim order refraining the party from conducting APC convention and nobody knew about it. It was like hiding a nuclear weapon from the party. So we had to move fast and remove Buni.
“Currently, 19 governors are with us out of 22. About 2 to 3 governors who were not with us were planting fake news here and there. They want to make sure we never had a convention so that APC will not have candidates like they did in Zamfara.
“We wouldn’t allow (it), all the governors had moved to Abuja to correct things. Sani Bello is our acting chairman and he had reduced the convention committee to a manageable size.”
Many Nigerians were shocked on Monday when Governor Abubakar Bello of Niger State made a dramatic entry into the party’s national secretariat in Abuja to preside over the caretaker committee meeting.
He, thereafter, administered the oath of office on the controversially elected state chairmen of the party.
