Our inauguration legal, says Ogun PDP chairman

The new Chairman of the Ogun State Chapter of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Samson Bamgbose, has said that the inauguration of the new state executive committee last Friday complied with the laws of the land and therefore valid.

Bamgbose, who spoke yesterday while reacting to a statement credited to National Chairman and National Secretary of the party, Uche Secondus and Senator Umaru Tsauri, respectively, dissociated the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party from the newly-inaugurated state executive committee in Ogun State.

The new chairman, in a statement, noted that while the position of the NWC was not unexpected, “it is disturbing that our leaders in this great party still do not understand (or just don’t care) that all politics is local and that handing over the structures of the PDP to Ladi Adebutu is a recipe for depletion of the commitment of members to the party in Ogun State and defeat at the polls.”

According to him, the issue as to which organ of the party is empowered to conduct congresses for the elections of party leaders in Ogun State had been resolved in suit which reposed the powers in the party’s state executive committee.

Bamgbose, who said that the validity of the judgment had been challenged at the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court where it was dismissed, stressed that the organ empowered to conduct congresses for the PDP in Ogun State is the judicially-recognised state executive committee.

He described the claim that the congresses that produced the new state executive and the inauguration contravened the interim injunction order made by Justice Inyang Ekwo directing the maintenance of status quo until the hearing of the notice as untrue because there was no interim injunction against the conduct of congresses in the state.

He said that the suit was instituted by some national officers of the PDP to seek a review of the judgment, which had ordered that only the said authentic PDP state executive could conduct congresses or primaries of the PDP in Ogun State.

According to him, the plaintiffs had applied for an order of the court to stop the PDP OGSEC from conducting congresses and the court had refused the application and directed that the defendants be put on notice.