A “cabal” is trying to engineer the impeachment of both Taraba State Acting Governor Garba Umar and Governor Danbaba Suntai if a medical panel determines that the governor is unfit to retake power, it was revealed yesterday.

The plan is for both of them to be removed at the same time so that the unnamed “cabal” will seize power illegally, Umar said in an interview aired yesterday.

Suntai returned to Nigeria last week, after 14 weeks in the United Kingdom for further treatment of injuries he sustained in a plane crash in October 2012. He had earlier spent 10 months in hospitals in Germany and the United States until August last year.

His associates say he is fit to take charge from Umar, who was made acting governor three weeks after the air crash near Yola.

But the State House of Assembly has now set up a medical panel to determine Suntai’s health status. Based on constitutional provisions, the governor would have to be removed if the panel determines that he is not fit to discharge his responsibilities.

Speaking in a BBC Hausa radio interview aired yesterday, Acting Governor Umar lambasted those he called part of a cabal that wanted to seize power illegally in Taraba.

He said there was no rift between him and the governor himself, but that some associates were trying to create problems for their own selfish ends.

Asked to comment on the alleged plans to remove him along with Suntai, Umar said: “Yes, that is what they think. Since they are saying my boss and me should be impeached, it means they are not with him.

“They are lying; they just want to seize power illegally and there is no law that permits doing that in this country. The constitution must be abided by.

“And I don’t even know what offence I committed that would warrant my impeachment.”

However, Tanko Kaura, a spokesman for Taraba State House of Assembly Speaker Josiah Kente, said he was not aware of a move by the House to impeach the acting governor. He described this as a mere rumor.

If both Umar and Suntai are removed at the same time – as happened in neighbouring Adamawa State, where Governor Murtala Nyako and his deputy Bala Ngilari were sacked in July – the constitution provides that the speaker shall take over and conduct a governorship bye-election within 90 days.

Acting Governor Umar said the State Executive Council decided to ask for a medical panel to be set up to ascertain the governor’s state of health because of persistent claims by associates that the governor was fit enough.

When asked if the medical examination was aimed at removing the governor, Umar said: “The issue of removal depends on the outcome of the medical panel. We just want to know the truth of his health status. Even me I don’t get to see him. I only see his photos just like you do in photographs and on TV.”

On whether he is trying to supplant Suntai as substantive governor, the acting governor said: “It is 22 months now that I have been acting as the governor.... All this while, I have never thought of anything like impeachment. But some people have continued to cause panic.

“I have been obedient to my boss, yet people will always say he is coming back to take over power. That is why we are trying to ascertain his health condition and then inform the world.”

Umar also said he was not desperate to hold onto power, and was willing to relinquish it to his boss if the boss was found to be healthy enough.

“Any time he comes and calls me to ask me to give back power to him, I will do that,” he said.

He also recounted how he was blocked from receiving Suntai at the airport in Abuja last week.

“When the governor was returning, I had the information and I went to welcome him. But they told me he was going to land at the old wing of the airport, after keeping people at both wings in a clear deceit,” Umar said, adding:

“I went there and waited, only for me to be told later he had since landed at the other wing. Before I could rush to the tarmac, he was put into a car and driven away immediately.”

He said throughout the 10 months that Suntai spent in Taraba after his first medical trip, he was allowed to see him only once.

•Adapted from a Daily Trust report. Photo shows Governor Suntai.

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