Divergent views now dog the recent appointment of a former official of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Nentawe Yilwatda, as the National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

While former governor of Plateau State, Simon Lalong, sees it as an added advantage to the President Bola Tinubu-led administration, former chieftain of APC, Eze Chukwuemeka Eze, alleged that Tinubu is having his eyes on electoral fraud in 2027, and that Yilwatda will not help him.

Lalong, who led stalwarts of the party from Plateau on a solidarity visit to Yilwatda at the APC National Secretariat in Abuja, referred to the new party chairman’s experience as Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) to buttress his assertion.

The Plateau South senator faulted the notion that Yilwatda would not be able to oversee the party because he was not a former governor like his predecessors.

Assuring that Plateau remains a stronghold of APC, he described Yilwatda as a master strategist with the capacity to speak the language of the middle class and the youths to galvanise for the party.

“When you talk about a party, you are talking about an election. What is it about an election that an electoral officer does not know? If he knows, it is an added advantage to this party,” he said.

He dismissed the threat posed by the African Democratic Congress (ADC), adding that the tricks in the opposition party’s baggage were not strange to the APC-led administration.
 
According to Eze, however, Tinubu’s recent appointment of Yilwatda as National Chairman of APC has further highlighted ulterior plans. Eze also noted that the sudden activation of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) attack mode against perceived political foes “is highly condemnable and signposts an administration that is paranoid over the conduct of a credible election” come the 2027 general elections.

In a statement released to the media on Wednesday, Eze stated unequivocally that none of what he described as the devious plots being adopted by the Tinubu administration to retain power would come to fruition.

“I wish to state that none of these acts, both unleashing the EFCC on opposition politicians and the appointment of Yilwatda as the National Chairman of APC, so that he can manipulate INEC, will save Tinubu from relocating back to Lagos come 2027,” Eze said. “The truth is that the 2027 general elections are neither between APC and ADC nor any other political party, but emphatically between APC and Nigerians.

“With the level of hydra-headed socio-economic and political calamities that have befallen this country due to Tinubu’s inhumane, clueless and anti-people policies, I know Nigerians will do everything humanly possible to free themselves from the circle of deaths occasioned by maladministration.”

For Eze, plans by the Tinubu government to intimidate the immediate Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), out of the coalition movement is an exercise in futility.

For Tinubu to go after Malami, one of the late President Muhammadu Buhari’s trusted ministers, a few weeks after the burial of the former president, according to Eze, is a sign of ingratitude and obsession with holding on to power by all means without minding whose ox is gored.

“Report at my disposal is that Malami will be questioned over at least five suspicious transactions during his time in office as the AGF and Justice Minister,” Eze said. “Five of the transactions under investigation are: The mysterious payment of $496 million to Global Steel Holdings Ltd (GSHL) as settlement for the termination of the Ajaokuta Steel concession nine years after the Indian company had waived all claims for compensation; his handling of the sale of assets worth billions of naira forfeited to the EFCC by politically exposed persons; his role in the $419 million judgment debt awarded to consultants who claimed to have facilitated the Paris Club refunds to the states; the strange agreement to pay Sunrise Power $200 million compensation in its dispute with the Federal government over the Mambilla power project; and the duplicated legal fees in the transfer of $321 million Abacha loot from Switzerland to Nigeria.”

Eze contended that the strategy by sitting Presidents to use security agencies like EFCC to hound opposition politicians prior to elections had become old-fashioned and no longer dreaded because of its selective aura.