Four major Presidential candidates in Nigeria’s forthcoming polls in the 2023 General Elections all declined to attend the recently organised 41st National Convention of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), organised by a factional National President, Mr. Camillus Ukah, in Abuja from 26th to 29th October, 2022.
Information reaching our news desk indicates that the four major Presidential candidates of – Atiku Abubukar (PDP), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu (APC), Peter Obi (LP) and Rabiu Kwankwaso (NNPP), are aware of the factions in ANA and therefore rescinded from accepting the invitation to attend the purported national convention by a faction led by Ukah.
They told our correspondent that attending such gathering of a factional writers’ group, embattled by ongoing legal battle, shall put them in bad light as endorsing a faction as the courts are yet to authenticate any national president of ANA between Ahmed Maiwada and Camilus Ukah – this they believe is subservient and tantamount to be bias and they call on ANA to put its house in order.
According to a source, who preferred anonymity, he is quoted as stating: “We call on the two ANA Executive to settle her scores. No presdiential candidate would want to attend a body of Factional writers’ group as this might boomerang to affect their image as supporting an illegal group of writers. You can see how these front presidential runners attended the conference of Lawyers and Accountants. It gave them a platform to campaign and sell their idealogies to professionals. But a factional group of ANA is not rife for campaigns.
This development left the scanty attendees of the Ukah’s led faction of ANA dejected and distraught as the other camp of Ahmed Maiwada are frantically working towards speedy execution of a contempt suit filed against the Ukah-led executive for going ahead to hold the last 40th ANA Convention in 2021 against a subsisting court injunction granting a pause of such gatherings until the final verdict is pronounced.
It was observed that due to raving floods in some parts of the nation, some faction loyal to the Ukah’s faction, were absent at the annual gathering of writers as a result of the natural disaster and other sectional interests.
Recall that ANA National had been embroiled in leadership crisis since October 2019, when a National Executive could not be duly elected at the Enugu convention, due to the shoddy tactics of the immediate past president, Denja Abdullahi, who was hell bent on installing a successor by tinkering with the electoral process.
This untoward act provoked the ire of members resulting a bitchee Convention and subsequently
ANA was split into two factions led by Camilus Ukah and Ahmed Maiwada until date.
Packaged by Alice Egbedele
