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The 2017 Elective National Convention of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has come and gone but the aftermath of the event remains a subject of public discourse.
I recall in July this year when the Supreme Court sacked Ali Modu-Sheriff and reinstated Ahmed Makarfi as the authentic national chairman of the party, on this column, I listed some of the losers of the apex court verdict in the Senate to include: the current chairman, Senate Committee on Customs and Excise, Hope Uzodinma; his counterpart on Privatisation, Ben Murray-Bruce and the senator representing Ogun East, Buruji Kashamu.
Of the trio, only Murray-Bruce, popularly called ‘commonsense’, was able to warm himself into the hearts of the outgone Makarfi-led National Caretaker Committee (NCC) and the newly-elected National Working Committee (NWC) led by Uche Secondus.
However, Kashamu proceeded to court to get an injunction restraining the party from taking disciplinary action against him, which was granted. But he overstepped his bounds when he approached a Federal High Court in Abuja, seeking to stop the party from taking ‘anticipatory’ disciplinary action against him in the build-up to the convention. But delivering his judgment seventy-two hours to the convention, Justice Nnamdi Dimgba declined jurisdiction to hear the case on merit and struck it out after upholding PDP’s preliminary objection challenging the competence and validity of the suit. The judge described the suit as ‘hasty, premature and inappropriate’.
This paved the window for the party to suspend the embattled lawmaker in the early hours of the convention, for one month. No reason was given for the sudden decision of the party.
The suspension was meant to prevent the embattled lawmaker from participating at the convention, which eventually paid off. Even when he found his way to the venue, he was booed and driven out from the Ogun State stand by delegates from his own state.
Power equation has also changed in Imo State, where Uzodinma lost out in control for the soul of the party to the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Emeka Ihedioha. The senator was conspicuously absent from the exercise despite being a statutory delegate.
With exactly 425 days to the 2019 general elections, there are already permutations about who will emerge the presidential and vice presidential candidates of the party. Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu has been tipped as running mate to former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, who recently returned to the party.
It was therefore, not a surprise that Ekweremadu was the first to react to Atiku’s return to the party a fortnight ago, even before the party officially commented on the matter.
The former Vice President also has foot soldiers in the National Assembly, one of whom is Murray-Bruce who recently described the Turakin Adamawa as the “next president of Nigeria”.
However, the major hurdle to Ekweremadu’s aspiration is the fact that the vice presidential ticket may be micro-zoned to the South West geo-political zone to assuage the region for being denied the Number One party position at the just concluded convention.
Meanwhile, efforts by the party to woo its former members received a major boost when the picture of Senate President Bukola Saraki; Chairman Senate Committee on Federal Capital Territory, Dino Melaye; his counterpart in Banking, Insurance and other Financial Institutions Rafiu Ibrahim – all lawmakers of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) – surfaced, exchanging pleasantries and congratulating Secondus on his emergence as the new PDP chairman.
Saraki has also been tipped as one of the presidential hopefuls for 2019.
I wouldn’t know if this is a coincidence but twenty-four hours after the pictures went viral on social media, the Abuja Division of the Court of Appeal nullified the acquittal ruling of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) handed down in favour of Saraki, in June this year.
In a unanimous judgment in the appeal filed by the Federal Government against the Senate President’s acquittal, the three-man panel of the Court of Appeal headed by Justice Tinuade Akomolafe – Wilson dismissed 15 out of 18 counts filed before the CCT on the grounds of lack of evidence.
But the court ruled that Saraki had a case to answer with respect to three of the counts numbered 4, 5, and 6. It therefore ordered the Senate President to open his defence in respect of the three counts at the Court of Appeal.
But with the 2019 elections fast approaching and the realignment of political forces, it would be interesting to see the dimension the case will assume.
Will Saraki’s recent romance with PDP influence the judgment of the Supreme Court when he appeals the judgment of the appellate court? Your guess is as good as mine.
OWEDE AGBAJILEKE, Abuja
