AC alleges moves by PDP, Aondoakaa to destabilise NBA

By Innocent Anaba

The Action Congress (AC) has accused the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr Michael Aondoakaa (SAN), of seeking to destabilise the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) over what they perceive as the association’s persistent criticism of the President Umaru Yar’Adua’s administration.

AC’s National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, in a statement yesterday said: “Part of the strategies being employed to destabilise the association is to tag NBA President, Chief Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN), as being pro-AC and get some NBA officials to publicly disagree with Akeredolu, thus giving the impression of a crisis in the ranks of the association.

“The threat to impeach Akeredolu is being championed by the PDP and Aondoakaa, using as their arrowheads some compromised members of the NBA executive and members who have since been circulating damaging texts on the NBA President,” he said.

The party, however, warned the association not to allow itself to be decimated by those who are always quick to label any critic of the Yar’Adua government as an enemy of the nation, and those who will stop at nothing, including using ethnic sentiments, to silence the NBA.

“The memory of the fate that befell the NBA under the military dictatorship of the 1990s, when the association could not freely elect its executives and its voice was silenced for almost a decade, is still too fresh to be allowed to repeat itself,” AC said.

The party said to the best of its knowledge, Akeredolu is not a card-carrying member of the AC, noting however that if the views of the NBA, under his leadership, of the utterly impotent Yar’Adua administration tallies with what the AC has been saying all along, it does not see anything wrong in that.