Embarrassed, Obasanjo’s PDP faction takes battle against Jonathan, Tukur to NEC

The Ogun PDP faction is loyal to the former Nigerian President.

Former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s camp of the Ogun state People’s Democratic Party have admitted it was “embarrassed” by national body’s pronouncement outlawing its grip on local power.

The faction said on Saturday it will appeal the ouster to PDP’s second highest decision making body, the National Executive Council. The decision to outlaw the faction’s grip on local power was taken by the National Working Committee, NWC.

Chairman of the Obasanjo-loyal faction, Dipo Odujinrin, stated the faction’s embarrassment and plans in Abeokuta, the capital of Ogun state, after a seven-hour emergency meeting of his executives on Saturday.

He insisted the pronouncement, which came late last week as battle for control of PDP intensified, must be reverted in the interest of justice and fair play.

The NEC battle

Mr. Odujinrin said they are appealing to the NEC in accordance with article 31 sub-sections 2(8) of PDP’s constitution.

“We believe that our appeal to that body (NEC) would receive a favourable consideration and this injustice is
corrected,” he said. “We put our faith in the National Executive Committee of PDP and trust that the right thing will be done.”

The National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Olisa Metu, on Friday released a statement on behalf of the NWC, where he described the Mr. Odunjirin led Ogun state PDP executive as illegal. The party spokesperson said the NWC, based on a court ruling, would only recognise the faction of the Ogun PDP led by Bayo Dayo, a loyalist of controversial businessman, Buruji Kashamu.

Mr. Odunjirin said his executive was aware of the court rulings cited by Mr. Metuh in his statement. He said they had filed appeals against the ruling and were surprised that the NWC did not wait for the appeals to be heard before it acted.

The embattled PDP leader said that his members, as loyal members of the party, decided to exhaust all the avenues for reconciling the grievances as stipulated by the party’s constitution; hence their resolve to appeal to the party’s NEC.

“If the Appeal has been heard, the whole situations would have been different; but in order not to allow the Appeal to be heard, that was why the National Working Committee withdrew the Appeal suddenly and was now able to use the ruling that was subsisting in taking their decision which they said they took two days ago.”

He argued further that the congress which Mr. Metu relied upon to sack his executive had been nullified by the former National Publicity Secretary of the party, Rufai Alkali, through a paid advertorial of March 2012.

It’s Bamanga’s plot

He also said that the decision of the NWC of the PDP to replace the Ogun State Executive Committee was pre-determined since Mr. Tukur had appointed another counsel, Joe Gadzama, who eventually withdrew all the appeals from the law court.

“I found it very disturbing because we saw the signs during the week when we observed that J.K Gadzama, SAN, issued a notice of discontinuance of the Appeals against the court cases which the National Publicity Secretary referred to as reasons which the committee used to take their decision.

“It was very obvious that the appeals were going against the Buruji Kashamu group and if you all recall, in an attempt to stop one of the Appeals, the Bayo Dayo group wrote a petition in which he alleged that Olusegun Obasanjo gave money to Afe Babalola to bribe Court of Appeal Justices who were going to seat on the Appeal on that day and that made the Appeal Court to excuse themselves from the matter,” Mr. Odunjirin said.