A DETACHMENT of armed policemen from the Ondo State Command on Tuesday prevented the planned delegates conference of a faction of the Performing Musicians Association of Nigeria (PMAN) from holding in Akure, the state capital.The police team led by the officer in charge of the State Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) stormed the Owena Hotel venue of the event on the orders of the Commissioner of Police, Sanni Mogaji before the arrival of the delegates, and sealed off the hall.It was learnt that the police acted on the request of the leadership of the association under Murphy Ban-Anthony, who insisted that it was the authentic custodian of the association's constitution since it emerged according to its tenets.The botched parley was called at the instances of one of the founding fathers of PMAN, King Sunny Ade and the immediate past president of the association, Dele Abiodun (Adawa Super).But, acting on a tip-off, the sitting president of PMAN, Ban-Anthony moved in with a bus full of loyalists, including PMAN's taskforce members, to stop the conference before taking off.The situation nearly degenerated into fracas between the Ban-Anthony group and the police team attached to it on one hand and the Sunny Ade group and its Odua Peoples' Congress (OPC) supporters on the other hand but for the quick intervention of Magaji who invited both parties for a peace parley in his office at, Igbatoro-road.On arrival, the Ban-Anthony faction had approached the CP to brief him about the illegality of the Sunny Ade-led delegates conference, arguing that such summit could not hold at his back as the sitting president of PMAN.The Sunny Ade faction, on the other hand, had made provision for adequate security coverage at the venue of the conference with armed policemen and battle ready members of OPC, to forestall external aggression.The CP later met the parties in his office for about two hours and resolved that the delegates' conference should be put on hold to give room for further dialogue on the crisis.Sunny Ade, who later addressed journalists on the outcome of the meeting with the CP, dismissed the insinuations that he was about to impose a new leadership on the association.His words; 'We only came for the conference to put in place a technical committee which will put machineries in motion to constitute a caretaker committee to run the affairs of PMAN. To be frank with you, as a person and a founding father of PMAN, I am not happy with the way things are being run in the association and this is what informed the conference.'I see the need for a consolidated conference that will turn in a caretaker committee accepted by all stakeholders and allowed running the affairs of PMAN and put in place a popular and widely acceptable leadership.'The juju maestro revealed that both parties agreed in the presence of the CP that nobody or group would do anything in the name of PMAN until every faction, group and stakeholder met in Lagos for a meeting on the next line of action.For his part, Ban-Anthony, expressed appreciation over what he described as the fatherly role played by Sunny Ade in the crisis, seeking further support and wise advice for his leadership of the association.
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