APC heading for crisis as Oshiomhole wages war with Ngige, other ministers in Buhari’s cabinet

APC National Chairman Adams Oshiomhole has threatened to expel from the party those ministers that award contracts and refuse to constitute boards in their ministries .

Oshiomhole said the ministers are taking advantage of the fatherly nature of President Muhammadu Buhari, and are disrespecting the office of the president.

“You know, we must return to internal discipline. You cannot purport to be an honourable minister and you act dishonourably. Nobody is greater than the party,” he told State House correspondents in Abuja on Monday.

“If the President condones disrespect for his office, I will not condone disrespect for the party.

“And when we expel the minister, we will prevail on the President that he can’t keep in his cabinet people who have neither respect for his own decisions nor have respect for the party without which they would not have been ministers.

“There are no independent candidates in our system. Nobody, I emphasise, no minister is above the party and they have taken undue advantage of the President’s fatherly disposition.”

According to him, the APC under his leadership would not continue to tolerate ministers who abuse their offices and disrespect Buhari by refusing to carry out his orders.

He said it was illegal for a minister in a democracy to subvert the powers of the boards because the laws establishing the institutions are clear.

The former governor said he was sure that affected ministers involved did not have the President’s backing in their actions.

“When a minister sits in his office to appropriate the powers of the board in a democracy — not in a dictatorship — and award contracts that didn’t go though boards, those are clear abuse of office for which they are liable.

“Over the period, they have tried to drop the President’s name, but I tell them it is the same authority that appointed these people.

“So, we are informing them that it is either they comply with the President’s instructions or they comply with the party’s position or they go and administer outside the government.

He said his leadership have respect for ministers, but only to the extent that they recognise that they are products of a political party.

“If they did that in the past, under our leadership we will not tolerate it.
“When we expel them, we will find out how a government can keep a rebel in the cabinet.

Labour Minister Chris Ngige was the first among ministers to face the fury of Oshiomhole, an ex-president of the Nigeria Labour Congress, over the failure to inaugurate boards pf agencies and departments in their ministry.

The APC chairman, in a letter, has given the labour minister seven days within which to constitute the boards.