Eight Commissioners Dump Adamawa State Cabinet, Govt Grinds To A Halt
The Oasis Reporters
December 4, 2017
To reshuffle his depleted cabinet soon.
The government of Jibrilla Bindow of Adamawa state is currently battling to maintain the semblance of a working cabinet with utmost difficulty as eight of the state Commissioners have tendered their letters of resignation and quit the cabinet.
This has made it imperative for the state governor, Jibrilla Bindow to see to making plans at a Cabinet reshuffle soon
The about eight commissioners in the Jibrilla Bindow, led APC controlled state Government, who pulled out of the APC have done so in support of the former vice president, Atiku Abubakar who is the Waziri Adamawa and the main prop that brought the Bindow administration to power.
Atiku just jumped from the All Progressives Congress (APC) party, back to the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in a bid to actualize his presidential ambition.
The serving commissioners , who are known as Atiku boys and girls, that opted to pull out of the APC in support of Atiku Abubakar include Dr Fatima Atiku Abubakar, currently the commissioner of health in the state., the commissioner of works and housing, Barrister Lilian Stephen, the commissioner of land and survey, Yayaji Mijinyawa and the commissioner of youths and sports, Mr Augustine Ayuba.
Others are Alhaji Daware, Commerce and Trade and Ahmadu Waziri, Agriculture.
The decision of the commissioners to go with their principal, Atiku Abubakar out of the APC, has totally crippled the activities of the state government in the last three weeks as it means over half of the cabinet might have effectively pulled out.
What is not yet known is whether the State Governor, Jibrilla Bindow and his deputy, Martins Babale, would also eventually pull out of the party. Atiku is speculated to to have funded the 2015 Governorship election of the Governor. A fact which has pitted most of the stakeholders of the party against the Governor as they accused him of being loyal to Atiku Abubakar.
It would be recalled that the chairman of the state branch of the party, APC, Alhaji Ibrahim Bilal, had while endorsing President Mohammed Buhari for 2019 presidential race asked party members not comfortable with the decision to align themselves with the majority or opt out as the APC was interested in keeping a united front.
The call to shape up or ship out by Bilal has not gone down well with most of the state government functionaries, who belong to the Atiku group.
Alhaji Yayaji Mijinyawa, the commissioner of land and survey, confirmed that his loyalty and that of the quitting Commissioners belongs to the former vice president, Atiku Abubakar who sponsored them into the cabinet in the first place.
“Waziri Atiku is our leader , our association with him goes back long while. It would be childish for anybody to think we would go against him”, he was quoted to have said.
“Even if some of us are deserting the Waziri now due to the pressure of office, definitely you don’t expect his own daughter, Dr Fatima, to desert him, and remember, Waziri funded the campaign of this party in 2015, his funds brought this government to power”, he concluded in an interview with Metrowatch, an online journal.
Barrister Abba T. Shehu, the Adamawa state chairman of the PDP, confirmed Atiku Abubakar’s pull out from APC which he believes would ground the ruling party in the north east.
Political observers note that Jibrilla Bindow might put up a bold face and get on with the APC to avoid any backlash from the central government, but would be secretly working for Atiku Abubakar until 2019 before making a dramatic switch of public allegiance.
Additional Source : Metrowatch
