PDP Crisis: Appeal Court Decides Fate Today

Appeal Court sitting in Port Harcourt will today deliver its judgement which will put the lingering Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, national leadership crisis to rest. According to inferences drawn by our specialist panellists on the matter, Nigerian Pilot can report that the Senator Ahmed Makarfi and Senator Ben Obi-led faction of the party may emerge victorious from the court decision. “Based on the arguments canvassed in courts at the heat of the numerous legal battles from the lower court to the appellate court, it is glaring that the Makarfi-led faction will be declared by the court of Appeal Port, Harcourt Division, as the authentic leaders of the party,” the experts argued. Should the foregoing come true, it would imply that the tussle between the two factions led by former Kaduna State governor, Ahmed Makarfi, and former Borno State governor, Ali Modu Sheriff, respectively, will be laid to rest. Two separate Federal High Courts in Abuja and Port-Harcourt of coordinate jurisdiction had given conflicting judgements regarding who the authentic chairman of the party is. While Justice Okon Abang of the Federal High Court, Abuja, ruled that Sheriff was the authentic national chairman, the Federal High Court in PortHarcourt ruled that Makarfi was the rightful chairman. However, in December 16, 2016, the Appeal Court in Abuja adjourned indefinitely a separate hearing in the leadership tussle, pending the outcome of a related case pending before the PortHarcourt Division of the court. The adjournment was sequel to a motion filed by the Sheriff faction which urged it to temporarily hands off the suit filed by the Makarfi faction. The Makarfi caretaker committee is a creation of the national convention, the highest organ of the party, and the other is led by Sheriff whose national working committee was dissolved in Port-Harcourt. But Sheriff believes that the purported dissolution did not follow due process. The party’s legal quagmire began at the Federal High Court in Lagos where Sheriff, Alhaji Fatai Adeyanju and Prof. Wale Oladipo, as plaintiffs, prayed the court for an interlocutory injunction restraining the PDP from conducting any election to the offices of the national chairman, national secretary and national auditor, which they occupied pending the hearing and determination of the substantive suit. This was before the national convention which was slated to hold on May 21, 2015. The presiding judge, Ibrahim Buba granted their prayers but the planned convention went ahead with Sheriff in attendance. Notwithstanding protests from other prominent party members against his emergence as acting chairman, Sheriff, who was initially backed by the PDP Governors’ Forum, a powerful bloc within the party, ironically sanctioned the May 21, 2016, convention with optimism about his possible confirmation for another two years. But that did not happen. Instead, the stakeholders wanted Sheriff to step aside, which he saw as an ambush and quickly called off the convention while others went ahead, and it was the convention that produced Makarfi. Sunday, May 22, 2016, heavily armed policemen took over the national headquarters of the PDP when news filtered in that Sheriff and his supporters would storm the place to continue to lay claim to the office. Five police vehicles comprising two trucks and two pick up vans blocked access on both ends of the street directly in front of the secretariat. The Makarfi faction did not occupy the PDP facility for long as Sheriff and his supporters later forced themselves into the national secretariat, making the caretaker committee and his group to move temporarily to a hotel. On May 23, Sheriff filed a motion on notice in the Federal High Court, Lagos, for the purpose of setting aside the national convention of the party held on May 21, where he hoped to emerge as chairman. On May 24, counsel to Sherriff and other plaintiffs, Mr. R. A. Oluyede told the court that the PDP had flouted the order dated May 12, 2016, as it had gone ahead to conduct elections into the offices of national chairman, national secretary and national auditor. Thereafter, Justice Buba declared the caretaker committee illegal. But the caretaker committee insisted that elections were not conducted during the convention and that it did not fill the three posts in line with the court orders, as there was no order against setting up a caretaker committee. While Buba in Lagos affirmed the interim chairmanship of Sheriff, another Federal High Court in Port-Harcourt ordered him and the NWC to stop parading themselves as leaders of the party. On June 29, Justice Valentiine Ashi of FCT High Court, Abuja, nullified the 2014 amendment of the PDP constitution on the grounds that it did not comply with Section 66(2)(3) of its constitution by not serving the national secretary with a written copy of the proposed amendment two months before the convention, which the secretary was also required to circulate among secretaries of the party a month before the convention. Surprisingly, it was the same
provision the party had relied on to appoint Sheriff as chairman, in the first instance. Article 47, paragraph 6 of the amended constitution states: “In case of any vacancy, the party’s National Executive Committee, NEC, can appoint an acting chairman from the area or zone where the last occupant of the office comes from pending when election is conducted, to reflect that where there is vacancy, the acting chairman shall serve the tenure of the officer who left before the expiration of the tenure.” The ruling was a major setback to Sheriff whose emergence in the first place was predicated on the 2014 amended constitution of the party. But Sheriff rejected the ruling, stating that he had not yet joined the party when the amendment was made, and as such, did not affect his position as chairman. However, on July 28, a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja nullified the Markafi-led caretaker committee. Controversial judge, Justice Okon Abang who ruled in Sheriff’s favour held that the convention held on May 21, 2016, was a nullity. On August 17, an Abuja High Court reaffirmed Sheriff’s ouster. The court, which was presided over by Justice Nwamaka Ogbonnaya, reaffirmed the sack on the ground that the judgment of Justice Ashi, which nullified his appointment on June 29, had not been set aside or vacated and was therefore subsisting. With the decision of the Appeal Court which may go the way of Senator Makarfi-led faction of the PDP, there is the likelihood of the aggrieved Sheriff faction proceeding to the apex court for further adjudication.