The unending tales of maladministration and financial impropriety trailing the tenure of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, ex-FCT Council Chairman, Mr Emmanuel Ogbeche has caused pulsating tension in the council as members gear up for the next Congress expected to hold on Saturday, 14th September, 2024.
Investigations reveal that in a bid to cover up a lot of alleged financial malfeasance and other sundry atrocities committed by Mr Ogbeche as Chairman of Council, his inner caucus and cohorts in the alleged fraudulent affairs held a clandestine meeting for about 6 hours on Friday.
Present at the dubious meeting were the Ex- Chairman,Chizoba his wife, the current secretary of council, Ochiaka Ogwu and others whose only agenda was to strategise on how to bulldoze their way by using underhand tactics to nominate their cronies into the Credentials Committee(CC) for the upcoming NUJ-FCT council elections scheduled for December, 2024.
According to multiple sources who were at the council Secretariat at Utako, Abuja, the devious trio and others were involved in a do-or -die collaborative mission on how to appoint pliable and impressionable members as members of the Credentials Committee (CC) .
At the covert meeting, Mr. Ogbeche was said to have used a magnifying lens to go through the attendance register and thereafter directed his ‘Yes Man’ Ochiaka on how to present his secretariat report.
He also boasted about using some of his proxies to proceed to court to scuttle the whole electioneering process if things didn’t go their way as anticipated based on their nefarious plans to hijack the Credentials Committee (CC).
It was also gathered that during the meeting, Mr. Ogbeche allegedly pledged to mobilise his contacts and resources to protect the secretary who is in the eye of the storm over his shady handling of the distribution of 30 bags of rice allocated to the council by the national body.
Notably, our investigations reveal that the Chairman and Secretary of Council have been unable to convince the FCT Executive Committee (SEC) on the sharing formula applied by the Secretariat for the distribution of the rice.
Following the inability to persuade the SEC, one of the sources said, suspecting that Saturday’s congress may likely be contentious: “Ogbeche has put plans in place to secure his interest and this, perhaps, informed his decision to provide security back -up for Saturday’s Congress.”
Mr. Ogbeche was Chief Press Secretary( CPS) to the Governor of Cross Rivers state for some months until he was unceremoniously removed and transferred to the state liason office in Abuja as Special Adviser to the governor on Media.
