Targeting Amaechi

Amaechi

•Amaechi: aide resigns

Last week’s court ruling on the control of the PDP machinery in Rivers State strips Governor Rotimi Amaechi of his control of party affairs

As President Goodluck Jonathan and Governor Rotimi Amaechi, both members of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, duel at the Nigerian Governors Forum, a faction of the party in Rivers State took the battle right to the governor’s doorstep: the state chapter of the party.

Before last Monday’s sack of the state executive committee of the party by an Abuja High Court presided by Justice Talba Abubakar, Governor Amaechi’s hold on the party structure in Rivers state was total. The ousted executive committee, led by Chief Godspower Umejuru Ake, was made up of the governor’s men.

Two chieftains of the party, allegedly backed by Minister of State for Education, Barrister Nyesom Wike, took the party, the electoral panel that conducted the state congress in 2012 and the Independent National Election Commission before an Abuja High Court, seeking the sack of Ake and other members of the state executive committee.

The strategy worked, as the court sacked Amaechi’s men and declared Messrs Amechi Felix  Obuah  and Walter Ibibia Opuene, as the validly elected chairman and secretary respectively.

•Amaechi: Suffers a setback
•Amaechi: Suffers a setback

Amaechi’s loss of the party structure in the state is a fallout of the dispute between him and some party members, who do not want him to determine the party’s flagbearer in the next governorship election. Amaechi is thought to prefer Senator Magnus Abe, a former Secretary to the State Government, to Wike, a former Chief of Staff to the governor.

Obuah and Opuene had gone to court claiming they were validly elected chairman and secretary respectively at the 17 March 2012 state congress conducted by a panel led by Chief Dan Orbih and Mr. Steve Emelieze, chairman and secretary respectively.

The duo tendered an endorsed list of elected officials at the congress with the number of votes secured by each of the elected officials, their party membership numbers and voters card details clearly written against their names.

The list, which bore the signatures of the chairman and secretary of the electoral panel, was on the letterhead of the national secretariat of the party and showed that Obuah and  Opuene were nominated and elected as chairman and secretary with 721 votes and 713 votes respectively.

They contended that as winners at the state congress conducted by a properly constituted electoral panel and monitored by INEC, they ought to be the ones occupying the office of the chairman and secretary of the state chapter of the party and not Ake. They, therefore, urged the court to compel the national leadership of the party and the electoral body to recognise them as members of the executive committee of the party in the state.

Ake challenged the jurisdiction of the court to entertain the matter as well as the competence of the case, which he said was provocative and ought not to be commenced by an originating summons.

He told the court that the matter ought to be filed at a Federal High Court and not the Abuja High Court as INEC, one of the parties in the suit, is a federal agency. He, therefore, urged the court to dismiss the suit.

Ake, however, failed to substantiate his claims that it was he, and not Obuah, who won the state congress alongside other members of the executive committee.

A purported list of elected officials at the congress presented by Ake at the trial did not convince the court, as it appeared on a piece of paper and not the party’s national headquarters letterhead. Also, it bore a purported signature of the secretary of the electoral panel, Emelieze, who vehemently denied signing the list.

Mandatory ingredients like the membership numbers and voters registration details of the purported elected officials were also missing from Ake’s list.

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Orbih and Emelieze, who led the panel that conducted the congress, also distanced themselves from  Ake’s list, which they said was forged.

They both told the court that the list submitted by Obuah and Opuene is the authentic list of winners at the state congress.

They further pointed out that mandatory details of party membership numbers of the elected officials as well as voters’ registration numbers as contained in the list tendered by Obuah and Opuene were consistent and reflect the true position of the winners of the state congress.

Chief Godwin Obla, lawyer to Obuah and Opuene at the trial, argued that his clients participated and emerged winners as chairman and secretary respectively at the state congress and asked the court to declare them validly elected.

The court agreed with the lawyer and ordered that they be sworn into office, ending the reign of Amaechi’s men at the party’s secretariat in the state.

All the reliefs sought by Obuah and Opuene were granted by the court, which went ahead to make an order directing the party headquarters to swear them in as chairman and secretary respectively.

The party’s National Working Committee immediately complied with the court’s order, swearing in Obuah and Opuene, as chairman and secretary respectively.

The implication of this development, observers reckon, is a victory for President Jonathan, with whom Amaechi has been rowing.

Members of the rival Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, in the state are ecstatic about the development.

“We are elated over the setting aside of the PDP leadership in Rivers State, which was wrongly inaugurated by the Amaechi government. This has no doubt vindicated us, as we have earlier complained about the prevalence of injustice in the state by the present administration,” the party noted in a statement issued by the its Publicity Secretary, Mr. Jerry Needam.

ACN further noted that a party that can cheat its members during the primaries will stop at nothing to deprive or oppress its opponents in an inter-party contest like the general elections.

However, Amaechi is not taking his loss of control of the party apparatus in the state lightly. He described the decision of the court as as “a miscarriage of justice that will not stand”.

Mrs. Ibim Semenitari, Rivers State Commissioner for Information and Communications, made the governor’s position known in a reaction to the development. She explained that there was a subsisting court judgment from an Okehi High Court of equal jurisdiction with the Abuja High Court, which had earlier affirmed Ake as the elected chairman of the party in the state.

According to her, the action shows desperation on the part of the sponsors of  Obuah and a deliberate attempt to truncate democracy in the state and in Nigeria.

—Nnamdi Felix/Abuja

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