A ceremony that started well last week ended on a sad note. Tussles over possible leadership of the Nigerian Veterinary Medical Association (NVMA) had  divided the professional body along geopolitical lines, as a small group of aggrieved  members, under the influence of a past national president, allegedly disregarded the existing election rules, for what appeared to be group reasons.

 

Trouble started in the night of Thursday, the third day of the congress, at the ECOWAS Commission, Abuja, venue of the association’s 50th anniversary and annual congress, when a disagreement broke out during the election session of the congress. But for the quick intervention of the security officials who work at the Commission’s office, the three-man electoral body and the returning officer, a professor, would have been molested by some doctors for daring to stick to electoral rules.

 

 As an election year, a new executive was to be elected after dissolving the last one which has served the traditional and statutory two-year term. An aggrieved group of veterinary doctors who had planned to bring in their candidates of choice turned belligerent and threatened to beat up electoral officials over conditions they considered unfavourable to them.

 

Their candidate, a top female police officer currently serving at the State House Veterinary Centre, Abiuja was alleged to have fallen short of requirements for election, having failed to file in her nomination form within the stipulated period of time. This was coming after her failed attempt to bulldoze her way back into the Veterinary Council, another organ of the profession, where she reportedly tried to intimidate a key official of the council into including her name as a nominee.

 

Supporters of the police woman however alleged that she was being victimised by a group bent on stopping her from running for the association’s presidency. To them , she was being treated like that by the electoral committee because she was a woman. Her opponents however accused her  of failing to pay up her dues consistently and hurriedly going to pay up only days to the election, which still did not put her in a good stead to contest. This did not go down well with her supporters, whose leader was a past president, who was absent at this year’s conference.

 

It was learnt that the election guideline, which was produced by the said president during the 2008 congress at Owerri, and duly approved by the congress, was ignored by the dissenters. A copy of the guideline stated that anyone wishing to contest for any elective post at the national level must be a consistent fee-paying member, must be endorsed by the local chapter’s chairman and must have attended meetings at the state and national levels on a constant basis.

 

Some members of the outgoing executive and their backers,  who had strongly disagreed with the leadership style of their tenure’s president, Dr Gani Enahoro, created a stir when the electoral body decided to apply the existing electoral guidelines, which seemed unfavourable to them. It was gathered that one of the members of the out-going executive was also contesting for another position during this year’s election, but was said to have joined in attempts to beat up the members of the electoral committee.

 

A day before the election, it was reported that the file containing the submitted nomination forms was missing, but Dr Enahoro was able to produce photocopies of the missing forms. Eventually, two versions of nomination forms for the election were presented, but those emanating from the group supporting the police officer were found to be defective and unsuitable for use for the election.

 

The dichotomy was so sharp that the electoral process could not proceed until the security staff and managers  of the ECOWAS headquarters had to ask everyone to leave the hall when it was getting past 7 pm. The election process ended in a stalemate as the aggrieved parties did not allow order to return until the participants were ordered out of the ECOWAS hall.

 

Meanwhile, on Thursday, after a tip off, Dr Enahoro had to move out of the hotel where he stayed for the conference to another part of Abuja when it became clear that uniformed and plain-clothes policemen had been assigned to the Council building at Zambezi Crescent, Maitama. The policemen were to arrest Dr Enahoro who was expected to be at the council on Friday morning for a meeting. He had to go into hiding, answering phone calls from his hideout.

 

As of Friday night, it was gathered that members of the association’s board of trustee had started making spirited efforts to address the situation. Efforts to reach the police officer proved abortive as at the time of filing this report. But Dr Enahoro was still in hiding as at the time of filing this report.