By Some Elese, Abuja
The Supreme Court in the early hours of Wednesday ruled that Ahmed Makarfi is the authentic chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
While Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Walter Onnoghen, headed a five-man panel of the apex court, which gave the judgment, it was Justice Bode Rhodes-Vivour, who read the judgment.
In it the court set aside the majority judgment of the Port Harcourt Division of the Court of Appeal and stated that the suit filed by Makarfi faction before the Federal High Court in Port Harcourt was not an abuse of court processes. It held that the PDP national convention held on May 21, 2016 did not breach the party’s constitution, meaning that Sheriff’s removal, as party chairman was constitutional. Other members of the court, which sat on the ruling, are Tanko Muhammad, Kayode Ariwoola and Dattijo Muhammad.
With this ruling by the apex court the ex-governor of Kaduna State and Senator is now the authentic leader of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP and not his rival, Senator Modu Sheriff who had earlier wore the crown courtesy of three ruling by the lower court in three jurisdictions of Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt.
Trouble between them for the leadership of the opposition party heightened with a ruling of Federal High Court in Lagos on May 27, 2016, which gave different judgments, weighing in the favor of Sheriff even as Makarfi remained as caretaker committee Chairman for the party then embroiled in a leadership tussle that soon began to eat deep into the membership, many of whom took the chance to defect to the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC.
The Lagos court judgment was to restrain the party from conducting election into its national officers at a min-convention scheduled for Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.
The party on the strength of another judgment by a Port Harcourt Federal High Court had wanted to go ahead with the said convention on the planned date of May 21, but security operatives scared many members from attending, giving two Federal High Courts, again in Port Harcourt and Lagos, the ground to nullify and allow the outcome of the convention, respectively.
Then on August 15 it became the turn of the Abuja Federal High Court to intervene through a Justice Okon Abang ruling, which ordered the party to suspend its planned national convention for August 17. That ruling did not prevent the Port Harcourt FHC from giving the party a nod to go ahead. A confused INEC could only watch on the sidelines.
It was this ding-dong state of affairs at the level of the FHC that pushed the Sheriff faction to appeal the case at the Appeal Court in Port Harcourt.
On July 4, 2016, the court granted the wishes of the Sheriff faction, making him the chairman of the party. But the ruling soon became the source another round of serious combat off and on the media and within the party, warranting the intervention of former President Goodluck Jonathan at his Abuja residence and his Otueke country home in Bayelsa State, to no avail.
Undaunted, the Sheriff faction had to approach the Supreme Court in its last ditch efforts to regain control of the party, now severely factionalized with big members leaving in droves to the APC.
Some of the big names that have left include the senator representing Akwa Ibom South Senatorial District, Nelson Effiong, and a member of the House of Representatives from Plateau State, Edward Pajork. Others are former Senate president, Ken Nnamani, former governor of Enugu State, Sylvan Chime, who even donated a former PDP secretariat building owned by him, to the APC in the state.
