The impasse that has been ravaging the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) since 2019 continued on Thursday when a group declared the National Executive Council (NEC) illegal.
Because of disagreement over voters’ register, the association had to postpone the general election it suposed to conduct at its 38th national convention in Enugu in 2019.
However, chairmen and secretaries of the association’s various state chapters elected and inaugurated the current NEC in Abuja in March after an emergency meeting.
The NEC is being led by Ahmed Maiwada, one of the presidential candidates at the postponed Enugu election.
However, a group known as Bring Back ANA Movement has declared that the NEC is not legal, since it is “self-appointed.”
In a statement signed by a member of the group, Wole Adedoyin, the group warned “members of the public, corporate organisations, eminent politicians, ANA members and chapters across the nooks and crannies of the country to be cautious of a deviant, unelected and unconstitutional ANA National EXCO.”
Adedoyin quoted an electoral committee inaugurated by ANA Board of Trustees as reminding “all members, friends, associates and partners of ANA that for now, the association has no elected executive committee until such a time when the election being postponed would have been conducted and those elected duly sworn in . Therefore , anyone who parades him/herself as an elected national official of ANA should be ignored.”
He urged stakeholders of the association “to rise against the perfidy of this desperate group who seem determined to steal the mandate of ANA and arrogate to themselves the collective patrimony.”
But in an interview with Blueprint recently, Maiwada said, “anybody saying that the NEC I lead is constitutional should be ignored. It simply means that the person does not know ANA constitution.”
He said state chairmen and secretaries were empowered by Article 31:3 of ANA constitution to elect members of the NEC respectively.
According to him, “coming to Abuja was not for the purpose of holding an election; but when they came, about 21 chairmen and their secretaries, they saw the situations and decided to move from the meeting into have an emergency general election, which is provided for in ANA constitution in Article 31:3. The Article was read. People understood it. What was the contingency? What made it inexpedient? It was the illegal notice released by (Jerry) Agada. People said and agreed that if the illegality is allowed to take place, ANA is dead.
“Arguments went back and forth. It got to a point that a vote had to be taken on whether the election should hold or not. There were three ‘votes against it. The rest, over 30 people, voted in favour of the holding the election. After that resolution, we looked at the provision of the constitution that talks about quorum. Article 32:2 gave us the nod, and the election went on.”
