The leadership rift in the top echelon of the Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN) worsened on Thursday.
Its acting National President Mohammed Musa formally assumed office.
Musa, who was accompanied by the newly appointed Acting National Secretary Henry Ejiofor and 27 of the 31 National Executive Council (NEC) members, said he accepted the assignment given to him by the NEC with the utmost sense of responsibility.
The union leader promised to be guided by RTEAN’s constitution in the discharge of his responsibility.
He urged RTEAN members and leaders to cooperate with him to reposition the union.
Musa said he would work assiduously towards returning honesty and transparency, which the union was well known for, and return the union to members, who he called its rightful owners.
Musa directed zonal officers across the states to return to work and continue to promote peace in their domains.
The Acting RTEAN National President also said the Lagos State government, at a meeting with the faction against his leadership on Tuesday, affirmed that his tenure subsists till October 31.
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“At the meeting, chaired by Deputy Governor Dr Obafemi Hamzat, were both factions as well as the Commissioner for Transportation, Dr Frederic Oladeinde; the Special Adviser to the Governor on Transportation, Mr Oluwatoyin Fasanya and the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Mr Olawale Musa. Dr Hamzat, having gone through his Certificate of Return, asked me to continue in office till October.
“The union’s constitution is very clear: the position I presently occupy at the national office is in acting capacity, while the state office was validly won, for which there is a statutory term,” Musa said.
The acting National President explained that contrary to his predecessor Osakpanwan Eriyo’s assertions, the union’s constitution states that the NEC could sit in any state of the country.
Also, Eriyo urged the union members in Lagos State to remain calm.
He said the crisis rocking the state chapter had been handed over to law enforcement agents to handle.
Eriyo, who addressed reporters at the national secretariat of the association in Abuja, alleged that Musa forced himself back into office after his tenure had expired and his executive council declared dissolved.
The embattled National Secretary said he refused to ratify what he called an illegality.
He described as illegal the announcement by a group of members of the association, including the embattled former chairman of the Lagos State chapter, claiming that the National President and General Secretary of the association had been expelled.
According to him, the group lacks the authority to make such decision or pronouncement.
Explaining the sequence of events that led to the faceoff, Eriyo said Musa’s executive council, which was inaugurated in June 2014, had exhausted its five-year tenure.
Then embattled National President added that the Musa-led executive council was dissolved in Abuja at a NEC meeting with Musa himself.
“The Lagos executive council was dissolved because their tenure has expired. Outside that, there are series of petitions from members of the association in Lagos; some of them alleging that the former state chairman, Alhaji Mohammad Musa, forged their signatures as well as trying to force them to support him for his second tenure. They wrote petitions on those allegations to this office as well as to the Ministry of Transportation.
“The former Lagos State chairman also invited me to Lagos to swear him in, based on the signatures he claimed his members had signed for his continuity. My own was to go ascertain if what he claimed was true; that the members were indeed the real owners of those signatures.”
“I went to Lagos and found out there were serious issues on ground and I told him that there was no way I would swear him in because those he claimed to have given their signatures were the same people who said they were not in his support.
“I called a NEC meeting to which I invited everybody to the Abuja office. He as well as his executive members were here. At the NEC meeting, we decided to dissolve the Lagos State chapter of RTEAN, to which Alhaji Musa was chairman, and set up a 23-man committee to run the Lagos affairs…”
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