PDP Crisis: Makarfi, Obi Risk Jail for Contempt

  • As Court  Orders Their Lawyers To Disappear from PDP Job
  • Reaffirms Sheriff As Chairman, Describes Makarfi’s Emergence As Strange and Suspicious

By Peter OSSAI,

Abuja Ahmed Makarfi and Ben Obi, Chairman and Secretary of the PDP Caretaker Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, risk imprisonment for contempt of court orders, having continued to parade themselves as leaders of the PDP in contravention of the court orders. nationalTRAIL reliably gathered that arrangements have been concluded to arraign the duo for contempt of court, with the attendant risks of attracting jail terms, for parading themselves as officers of the PDP contrary to court rulings which restrained them from parading themselves as Chairman and secretary of the Caretaker Committee of the PDP. Meanwhile, Justine Okon Abang of the Federal High Court Abuja has reaffirmed Ali Modu Sheriff as chairman and leader of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, with an attendant order for the Independent Electoral Commission, INEC to accord him the necessary recognition by accepting his nominees for the Governorship elections in Edo and Ondo states. Ruling via an enrollment order in suit number FHC/ABJ/ CS/439/2016, brought before him, the judge stated that the Ahmed Makarfi Caretaker Committee lacks legitimacy in the eyes of the law, and cannot take any action on behalf of the PDP. Justice Abang who had earlier asked lawyers nominated by Makarfi to enter appearance for the PDP in the suit ,to disappear from his court had noted that the circumstances of Makarfi’s emergence as a caretaker chairman of the PDP was both suspicious, strange and in breach of earlier court orders. While making references to earlier court rulings by the Federal High Court in Lagos on the PDP leadership of May 12 and 20, 2016, which foreclosed the emergence of new set of leaders for the party, Justice Abang stressed that Senator Ali Modu Sheriff remains the lawful Chairman. The judge ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC to accept nominations of candidates for the Governorship elections in Edo and Ondo states from the Sheriff leadership and not from any other person or persons or their proxies, stressing that, unless vacated, the orders in the earlier suits affecting the leadership of the PDP subsists. This is even as National Chairman of the PDP, Ali Modu Sheriff has dismissed the Caretaker Committee led by Senator Ahmed Makarfi as a misnomer and an aberration to the constitution of the PDP. He told nationalTRAIL in an exclusive interview that, the Makarfi Committee does not exist in law.


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