PDP Rejects Its Own Medicine   

ABUJA: People often wondered how the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, which warmly welcomes, or even encourages, elected defectors from other parties, would react if legislators elected on its platform defect to another party.

• Okwesilieze Nwodo, PDP national chairman.

They got the answer recently when 13 members of the Edo State House of Assembly who were elected on the platform of the PDP, led by the Speaker, Bright Omokhodion, decamped to the Action Congress, AC. Jolted by the action, PDP rushed to a Federal High Court in Abuja asking it to declare the seats of the 13 members vacant, and for an order compelling the Independent National Election Commission, INEC, to conduct by-election for those seats.

In Nigeria’s current democratic dispensation, it is well known that no political party has benefited more than PDP in the cross-carpeting adventure among politicians. Many politicians elected on other political parties’ platforms have abandoned those parties soon after winning at the polls and returned to PDP, which spared no expense celebrating their return.

The list is rich. It includes Isa Yuguda, a former PDP stalwart who won the Bauchi governorship election on the platform of All Nigeria Peoples Party. His defection back to PDP, along with virtually all members of the state House of Assembly, was widely and wildly celebrated. The Deputy Governor who refused to go along with Yuguda was even impeached. Governor Mahmud Shinkafi of Zamfara also decamped from ANPP to PDP with his deputy and many members of the House of Assembly.

At the resumed hearing of the suit on Monday 28 June, the grieving PDP, through its counsel, Dr. Alex Izinyon, a senior advocate, argued that for anybody to decamp from its fold, there must be the presence of a faction which must be recognised by INEC, otherwise that person loses his seat under the provision of section 109 (1) (g) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The lawyer posited that since there was no INEC-recognised faction of the PDP in Edo State, the members who decamped should be deemed to have vacated their seats. He therefore called on the court to order INEC to conduct by-election in their constituencies to fill their seats.

However, the Speaker, Hon. Omokhodion, through his lawyer, Mr. Ade Okeaya-Inneh, also a senior advocate, told the court that there is indeed a ravaging dispute in the Edo State chapter of PDP. He insisted that he took the decision to decamp as a result of the division, friction, rancour and problems that have dogged the PDP in the state for over a year now. He categorically stated that it had become impossible to act within the political party known as the Peoples Democratic Party. He also brandished certified true copies of newspaper publications to show that law and order had completely broken down within the Edo PDP.

The presiding judge, Justice Adamu Bello, consequent upon the submissions of Mr. Okeaya-Inneh, directed Dr. Izinyon to furnish the court with any authority to support his claims that the electoral body must recognise a faction before it can be accepted that a faction or a dispute exists within a political party. The matter was subsequently adjourned till 30 September, when the court is expected to deliver judgment on the matter.

– Reported by Nnamdi Felix.