By SAM ANOKAM
Friday, April 3, 2009
•Dele
Abiodun
Photo: Sun News Publishing
The last may not have been heard on the court ruling a fortnight
ago, declaring Admiral Dele Abiodun president of the Performing
Musician of Nigeria (PMAN). Immediately after the ruling,
his opponent and incumbent PMAN president, Tee Mac Itseli
said he would appeal against the judgment based on reasons
he highlighted at a press conference he earlier adressed.
Meanwhile, Daily Sun learnt from Teemac who confirmed the
appeal, saying that there was a pending court case before
the judgment was delivered.He said he can not immediately
vacate office as his own executive has decided to appeal against
the judgement.
Meanwhile, Abiodun spoke extensively to Daily Sun, narrating
what went wrong and the way forward among other issues.
The way forward
Honestly, I am a lover of peace. Throughout my career, I have
never been a violent person and nobody could come out and
say that I have exchanged blows with him or her before.
The way forward in PMAN is that I want to address my members
now, there is no victor, no vanquished. We should come in
with that spirit because as a leader of men one should have
honour and integrity. I am telling my fellow musicians over
there on the other camp to come and join me. There is no room
for intimidation or distraction.
We don’t have time to start apportioning blames because
we have a lot of work to do. PMAN is now grounded to zero.
We need to move fast so that we are not left behind in the
scheme of things. If it is about ego, whoever has it should
go and drop it. I beg them in the spirit of music because
if you don’t drop that ego, there is no way we would
move forward. This is the time for us to begin to have some
structures on ground. My mission is to leave a legacy that
cannot be eroded, that is what I want to do and that is the
way forward.
Interpretation of court’s ruling
It is not for you and I as laymen to interpret the court’s
ruling. My opponents have a lawyer, just as we too have our
own. They should go to appeal court and argue that. But why
is it that it was after the judgment was delivered that someone
thought of raising many allegations? Who will listen to you
because you have a lawyer that has been on this case for three
and a half years.
What has been his job? Why are they paying him? The only thing
I saw there is that he tried to delay this case by using all
tactics. You took me to court and you are writing letters
for excuses that you would not be coming to court.
This is all about the law. It is not about propaganda, it
has nothing to do with it. All I know is that a judgment has
been given. If any question is going to be asked on this,
it should be directed to the lawyers and better still, they
can go to appeal court or we could decide to reconcile.
Secretariat
We are in a democracy, if my opponents want to appeal, they
can go ahead and do that. As for the secretariat, when we
get to the bridge, we would cross it.
The other day we went there and they said we came there to
execute court order on our own which to me was right. But
then so if they said so, that we were wrong, we accepted we
went wrong, so we withdrew. After this, I don’t know
what would happen. All I know is that we have a judgement
in our favour and the law would take its course.
It is not about me, it is about the union, the musician and
the industry.
PMAN Constitution
We would start with a big step by reversing the constitution
to the old format. What they are supposed to do is not what
they did. What they did was to satisfy somebody. I can’t
imagine somebody calling himself a governor, senator when
in the constitution you have chairmen of state chapters, ex-officio
members, treasurers, first and second vice presidents as well
as the president. I have never seen a portion in that constitution
where anybody is being referred to as an ambassador. That
means that someone tinkered with the constitution to please
himself and cause chaos in this union. It is too bad.
Tee Mac and PMAN
Tee Mac is a musician and a flutist and I am a singer and
guitarist. If it is legal the law will tell and if it is not
legal the law will also tell us. Tee Mac should be very careful
before he sends himself to jail. Whatever action he takes
after this date honestly is contemptuous. I am not a lawyer
but I know that as a layman that if you go contrary to what
the court has said, you are committing contempt of court and
by so doing, it is also tantamount to impersonation.
Suspension
The constitution of PMAN says, if you are calling for an emergency
NEC meeting, written and printed, you needed not less than
four people to sign and it did not even say officials, it
said members. The letters they wrote to all the state chapters
was signed by just three people as ignorant as they were.
That would tell you that they have not acted according the
constitution one day. Charley Boy Oputa, Orits Wiliki and
Baby Barrister signed the letter and they sent it to all the
state chapters. We saw it and we picked it up. So it has been
part of our evidences in court. Why would you now tell people
that somebody was suspended when he knew that whatever he
did then was illegal?.
What went wrong?
Sometimes ago, we initiated a peace move at a hotel close
to my house. I don’t want meetings to hold any longer
in my house because I want to be neutral so tomorrow I would
be free to talk. We sat down there, Tee Mac, Mike Pam, Zimakoy,
myself as well as others. We now said if we wanted peace,
we should work out the modalities but we got to a dead end.
We decided to bring two people each from the two camps, let
them continue to meet to sort out grey areas so that they
report back to their principals – TeeMac and myself. You can
see how sincere I was.
They started holding meetings, one two, three four up to five
meetings, the next thing I heard was that on Tuesday, there
would be a press conference. You are holding meetings, we
have not finalized and the two principals have not met with
the peace committee members, then the next thing was to summon
us, sit across the table and tell us what you have arrived
at so that we can agree. We can now say let us put hand on
paper for a Memorandum Of Understanding. If we signed that,
and you asked me what we agreed on, I would then be able to
show the paper we signed on.
But, I would not be stupid before the press, my followers,
my family members and the public to sign what we haven’t
both agreed upon. The press conference should be the last
thing but they the cat before the horse. When they decided
they must go ahead with that press conference, somebody said
it doesn’t matter if we didn’t sign the MOU now,
it would be signed later. I then sent text messages to journalists
that I was not against any peace initiative but that I will
not be part of a press conference that did not agree on anything,
that I didn’t have anything to hold on to, they just
wanted me to show my face, hug Charley Boy and hug everybody.