By Yinka Olumide
Twenty-eight National Executive Council (NEC) members of the Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN) at an emergency meeting, has sacked the National President Comrade Osakpamwan Eriyo.
Also dismissed for what it described as ”gross sabotage against the interest of the union and the NEC”, is the RTEAN National Secretary General Mr Yusuf Ibrahim Adebiyi.
The Assistant National Secretary General Alhaji Adamu Zubairu Jalaludeen, who made this known at a press briefing after the meeting which took place at RTEAN Lagos State Headquarters, at Igando, said the National Deputy Chairman (Administration), Alhaji Mohammed Musa, being the most senior national officer, has been unanimously appointed as Acting RTEAN President, while the hitherto Deputy Secretary General Comrade Henry Ejiofor, is appointed the acting Secretary General of the union.
Until his appointment, Musa is the Lagos State RTEAN chairman.
Jalaludeen said the dismissal of Eriyo from the union remains, and he is therefore no longer recognised as the National President of RTEAN.
He said Eriyo’s one year regime brought a huge shame to the union, as it was exemplified by ticket racketeering, bribery, corruption and an expansionist agenda that has brought crisis to Kano, Katsina, Ogun and recently Lagos state councils of the union.
According to him; ”the RTEAN NEC, found it shameful, that Eriyo, who alongside the dismissed secretary general had collected N60 million from the Lagos State chairman for his second term of the exco, a development which has since been discovered to be fraudulent.”
The President according to him ”unashamedly in concert with his aid and without the consent of NEC on September 15, dissolved the duky constituted Lagos State executive and put in its place a caretaker committee wherein his appendage, Alhaji Sulaiman Onabanko, who presided over the meeting wherein Alhaji Musa Mohammed was unanimously adopted for a second term, was enthroned to head the caretaker committee, in a bid to annex Lagos and enthrone a corruption laden regime”
According to him, apart from the large scale fraud and diversion of funds, Eriyo also sidelined the NEC, making it, ”redundant in a manner that is at variance with the constitution and takes decisions without recourse to NEC.”
Jalaludeen said the RTEAN constitution is such that a person can hold two offices, and as such Musa is qualified to hold the office of the National President and the state Chairman.
He however said by the time the tenure expires in October, Lagos Council would have come up with a resolution of the matter.
However, in a swift reaction the National President Comrade Osakpamwan Eriyo has dismissed the purported sack by NEC.
Dismissing the action in a telephone interview, he wondered how a NEC could hold in Lagos without following the due process required for such meeting.
Meanwhile the meeting called at the instance of the Lagos State Government between the warring faction in Lagos was still ongoing as at press time.
The Chief of Staff to the Governor, Mr Tayo Ayinde had called the two parties for a meeting on Tuesday for amicable resolution of the crisis brewing in the state council.
Eight members had taken the Mohammed Musa leadership of the state council to the cleaners, even as the National President had on Monday set up a caretaker committee to oversee the activities of the council pending the election, which is slated for October this year.