Benue APC chair faces panel over anti-party

The APC chairman in Benue State, Abba Yaro, yesterday appeared before the North Central Zone Fact Finding Panel, over sundry allegations.

Yaro, who was at the APC Central Zonal Office, in Lafia, which was the venue of hearing, went there with all the 23 local government chairman of the party in Benue and other party stalwarts.

The party leadership in the zone had last week setup a five-man fact finding committee, headed by Barrister Muhammed Liman, from Niger State, to investigate allegations of anti-party activities, financial recklessness, high handedness and arbitrary expulsions of party members among others leveled against Yaro.

Yaro told the panel that he was not aware of the petition, and claimed that the petitioners did not serve him with a copy.

He therefore asked the committee to give him and his lawyers one week to study the content of the allegations.

In his response, chairman of the panel, Barrister Muhammed Liman, granted the plea and gave Yaro five days to file his defense. “In the spirit of the constitution of our party, the committee has given you up to Monday, 14 August to file your defense,” he said.

Earlier, one the petitioners, Johnson Agada, told the panel that Yaro was responsible for the inability of the party to field candidate for Ado/Ogbadibo/ Okpokwu Federal Constituency, a development that paved way for the PDP candidate, who happened to be a relation to the embattled chairman, to win in 2015.

Agada also tendered a Federal High Court judgement ruling that ordered Yaro to return N2.4 million party nomination form fees and pay N1 million damages to the APC candidate for not presenting his name to INEC.