Reps Tussle: PDP’s Antics Of Robbing Peter To Pay Paul

GEORGE AGBA reports that from the way the ongoing tussle over the Nsuka/Igboeze South federal constituency seat is playing out, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) harbours a nest of power mongers whose pastime is to frustrate innocent members for personal interest

That the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lost woefully to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2015 general polls is a reality many Nigerians are still considering a novel. But keen observers who hold strongly that the party had been a nest of dirty intrigues and betrayal opine that they saw it coming. They believe that it won’t take long before it finally wanes to political oblivion.

According to them, this may turn out to be an accurate prediction, as it is becoming clearer by the day that the party has refused to learn its lesson the hard way from the way it crashed in the last elections. The thinking is that PDP fell politically from grace to grass because its members traded internal democracy with impunity, political blackmail, dog-eat-dog syndrome and selfish personal interest.

The party’s true to type intramural political culture provoked bitter indignation from its primaries across the country. Unfortunately, this resentment was treated in a way that threatened internal cohesion in the party. And it seems things have refused to change in the PDP after the party’s poor outing in the recent elections.

A clear example is the ongoing tussle over the Nsuka/Igboeze South federal constituency seat in the National Assembly. It is believed that some political hawks in the PDP who don’t seem to be happy that Dr. Pat Asadu was re-elected to represent the constituency at the federal legislature instead of their own candidate are bent on ensuring that he is removed either by hook or crook.

Recently, it was reported that the national leadership of the PDP has disowned Asadu for allegedly parading a forged result sheet from the last primary election conducted by the party to select its candidate for the constituency. A court affidavit sworn to by the National Secretary of the PDP, Prof. Olawale Oladipo to this effect noted that the party secretary did not endorse the result sheet declaring Asadu winner.

The affidavit arising from a suit number FHC/ABJ/CS/50/2015 between Asadu versus PDP and three others over the outcome of the disputed primary election conducted by the party in December 6, 2014 insisted that the result did not emanate from the party’s national headquarters. This position is being peddled in favour of another candidate, Engr. Ikechukwu Ugwuegede who is claiming that he is duly elected candidate from the primary election.

While Asadu’s result sheet indicated that he was the PDP candidate who won the primary election with 88 votes, Ugwuegede is contending that he polled 83 votes to win the primary election. Ugwuegede claimed that he has since been declared the winner of the House of Representatives election in the constituency by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Curiously, the PDP’s own Appeal Panel, sat within 24 hours of the primaries, cancelled Ugwuegede’s purported result, upheld Asadu’s victory, submitted the same result sheet to the National Working Committee (NWC) as the authentic result sheet and declared him as the person validly nominated during the primaries.

Another curious aspect of the whole intrigue is that a Federal High Court in Abuja which relied on the document presented by Asadu, ordered INEC to issue the certificate of return to him instead. The national secretary of the PDP and all other members of the NWC were also parties in the case filed by Asadu.

Ironically, none of them raised any issue with the signatures on the result sheets or the result proper from the appeal panel report or throughout the trial up to the Court of Appeal. Close observers wonder why there were no issues all this while until recently when the party reportedly made a u-turn and turn the tables against Asadu.

Specifically, the Federal High Court headed by Justice G.O. Kolawole had on April 1, 2015 delivered a landmark judgment which clearly recognized Asadu as the authentic and duly-nominated candidate of the PDP. By implication the court declared the two term member of the House the winner of the House of Representatives seat for Nsukka/Igbo-Eze South federal constituency in the 2015 general elections.

Justice Kolawole declared that Ugwuegede’s result sheet is “a document of doubtful integrity if not outright forgery deliberately made up to meet the yearning of the 1st and 2nd Defendants (PDP and NWC) to refuse to accept the result of the primary election”.

Dismissing the report that he had been disowned by his party, Asadu said it was curious and a case of a bad loser. He said the National Secretary of the party was ignorant of the case, as it was under the National Organising Secretary of the party.

Noting that the case was in court for several months but the plaintiff never presented a case of forgery of result sheet until judgment went against him in April, he said, “The PDP is not in a position to dispute the documents now (result sheets) being that it was served those same documents in court and their own panel and they never protested until they lost”.

Apparently sensing that the latest case made against Asadu defied all logic, Ugwuegede invoked a more deeper crisis dimension into the matter. This time around it was reported that Asadu was on the run, ostensibly to evade arrest after a magistrate court in Enugu purportedly issued a warrant of arrest against him for forgery.

But Asadu has said he was yet to see a copy of the petition purportedly written by Ugwuegede to the Enugu State Police Command alleging forgery against him or the warrant of arrest which Ugwuegede purportedly secured from a Magistrate Court in Enugu. Wondering why a court of law would issue a warrant of arrest before even a documentable invitation, Asadu said “it is understandable that out of desperation, the petitioner and his hatchet men have resorted to smear campaigns against me in the media”.

The federal lawmaker further explained that when a copy of the said warrant of arrest was shown to the police in Enugu on the same May 29 when his arrest was purported to have taken place, the police doubted and even denied knowing about it.

He said, “Having failed to use the police or magistrate court to regain what was lost in the PDP Appeal Panel and the Federal High Court, the smear campaign against my name commenced in earnest.

“The only explanation is that the Enugu Police Command bluntly refused to be used as an instrument of harassment and intimidation in the face of a subsisting judgement of the Federal High Court which is subject of an Appeal.

“It is understandable that out of desperation, the petitioner (Ugwuegede) and his hatchet men have resorted to smear campaigns against me in the media, especially after the Court of Appeal rejected their invidious prayer that I should be restrained from being sworn-in alongside my other elected colleagues. I can only sympathize with him even as I wish him luck in his other endeavours”.

At the moment, the matter is before the Court of Appeal where Ugwuegede had run to to upturn the judgement of the Federal High Court which recognised Asadu as the bonafide winner of the election. But while awaiting the appellate court verdict, close watchers sympathetic to Asadu say they are waiting to see the legal abracadabra those bent on removing him intend to perform to get the judiciary to assist them in robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Reps Tussle: PDP’s Antics Of Robbing Peter To Pay Paul