The National Peace Committee of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) has charged the National Working Committee (NWC) to withdraw its expulsion order on the party’s founder, Dr Boniface Aniebonam.
The committee also recommended that the NWC write a letter of apology to Aniebonam for the obvious act of indiscretion inherent in the expulsion order.
The Rabiu Kwankwaso-led faction of the party expelled Aniebonam, the party’s founder and chairman of its Board of Trustees (BoT), alongside other members in August.
The BoT chairman, national publicity secretary Agbo Major, and others were accused of anti-party activities and were expelled with immediate effect.
The chairman of the party’s National Peace Committee, Azubike Anazor, stated in Lagos on Sunday that Aniebonam deserved due honour at all times as the founder of the party.
He also stated that the NNPP acting national chairman, Alhaji Abba Ali, should broker an urgent meeting between Aniebonam and Kwankwaso.
He added that follow-up meetings should be held between the duo thereafter to the exclusion of a third party.
According to him, this will induce confidence and herald a return to constitutionality, order, and democratic rule in the party.
Anazor stated also that the NWC and the National Executive Committee should suspend any move to amend or recommend amendments to any provisions of the party’s constitution.
“Amendments intended to detract from or whittle down the powers of any organ of the party as presently constituted can only engender bad blood and deepen suspicion of hijack of the party from its founders.
“This type of development cannot conduce to the required peace, unity, and oneness of the party as desired by its teeming supporters.
“All hostile press conferences, press releases, and television interviews that seek to escalate the crisis should be put on hold.
“NNPP is out to provide Nigerians with credible opposition presently and to urgently position itself for massive victories at all levels at the 2027 general elections.
“It can only attain these goals if it remains united and enlarges its membership, not by suspensions, expulsions, and exclusionary policies and actions,” he stated.
He added that the National Peace Committee was able to decipher the real issues of controversy between the warring parties, which had unfortunately been allowed to fester, threatening the corporate existence of the party itself.
The issues included alleged moves by the presidential candidate and national leader, Kwankwaso, to hijack the party, emasculate its founding fathers and replace them with the “Kwankwasiyya’’ group.
According to him, it was alleged that the proposed amendment of the constitution was meant to whittle down the powers of the Board of Trustees, the BOT chairman and founder of the party.
He added that there was a counter-allegation that some leaders in the old and defunct NNPP had been massively compromised by the opposition political party in Kano State to discredit Kwankwaso and thus reduce his influence in NNPP.
Anazor stated also that the expelled party executives in the states complained of a lack of fair hearing in their suspension and subsequent expulsion.
According to him, the committee discovered that the recent purported expulsion of Aniebonam from the party was considered by his supporters as an affront of unequal proportions.
The expulsion of Aniebonam, he added, was a flagrant overthrow of the NNPP Constitution, which confers “life membership” on him in the party’s BoT.
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