PDP to G7 governors: Retrace your steps or face sanctions

[Mirror]

...says New PDP members suffering from selective amnesia . That'll be suicidal for party –Baraje faction

The national leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, yesterday warned that the G7 governors might face sanction if they failed to retrace their steps.

Already, the party hierarchy has inaugurated the Umaru Dikko-led National Disciplinary Committee.

PDP also declared that the suspension of the reinstated National Secretary of the party, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, was in tandem with the provisions of the party constitution as amended.

The G7 governors – Governors Babangida Aliyu (Niger), Rabiu Kwankwaso (Kano), Sule Lamido (Jigawa), Rotimi Amaechi (Rivers), Aliyu Wamakko (Sokoto), Abdulfatah Ahmed (Kwara) and Murtala Nyako (Adamawa) – have factionalised the party with the formation of the New PDP.

The party had on Monday suspended Oyinlola; the National Chairman of the splinter New PDP, Abubakar Baraje; Dr. Sam Jaja and Ambassador Ibrahim Kazaure. On why the G7 governors were exempted from the sanction, PDP National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh, said that the party had "options for our other brothers."

He, however, said that the party had given the aggrieved leaders enough time to mend their ways and return to the party, warning that sanctions could be extended to them. Metuh noted that Section 57 (3) of the party constitution "expressly empowers the National Working Committee, NWC, to suspend anybody at the national level and to refer the matter to the disciplinary committee."

"The NWC, at any level of the party, and the executive committee (at the ward level) may, after preliminary hearings, suspend a member from the party for a period not exceeding one month, during which period the member so suspended shall lose his right to contest any election and shall be referred to the appropriate disciplinary committee," he said.

Oyinlola had on Wednesday rejected his suspension on the grounds that it ran counter to the provisions Section 57 of the party constitution which empowered the National Executive Committee, NEC, to sanction erring national officers.

He said the powers of the NWC to suspend a national officer were reinforced by the provisions of Article 29 (2b) which provides that: "In case of emergency, the NWC can act on behalf of the NEC subject to ratification by the NEC." But Metuh described the claims by Oyinlola and members of the Baraje faction that their suspension was mischievous as "a selective reading of our constitution."

He also accused the suspended members of adopting selective amnesia in handling the suspension slammed on them by the party. Metuh explained that when Baraje was the national secretary of the party in 2010, he personally signed the press statement suspending former Senate President Ken Nnamani, a member of PDP national executive committee, and other key officers of the PDP Reform Forum when they were clamouring for the reform of the party.

He also reminded Oyinlola and Jaja that when they were national secretary and deputy national chairman respectively, they were part of the officers of the party that on November 13, 2012 sat and approved the suspension of the incumbent National Vice-Chairman (North-East), Alhaji Girigiri Lawal.

The PDP spokesman told Jaja that he was also part of the 307 NWC meeting of May 27, 2013 where a decision was taken to suspend Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State, also a member of the NEC. Metuh reiterated that as at the time he was addressing the press conference yesterday, the party had not been served with the ruling of the Court of Appeal which last Wednesday upturned the sack of Oyinlola.

He noted that it would be out of place for anyone to expect the party to go to the court to beg to be given or served the court judgement. But the spokesperson of the New PDP, Chief Chukwuemeka Eze, told National Mirror that attempts by the PDP to sanction the G7 governors would result to the burial of the party.

He said: "They do not have the powers to sanction elected governors. Let them go ahead because history will bear witness that it is during the reign of Bamanga Tukur that PDP was deregistered and that Tukur and his gang supervised the demise of the party that they did not help in forming."

"Is he (Metuh) telling the Nigerian public that because someone signed something in the past, therefore, the constitution of the party as amended recently should be overlooked? "The constitution has explicitly said that the NWC has no powers to sanction a NEC member without due process.

The constitution of the party said that before such person is sanctioned, such person must be invited by the leadership to hear from him before passing judgement, that has not been done.

"It is just unfortunate the kind of impunity that is going on in the party and that is what the G7 and the entire New PDP have been saying all these while."

[Glory Skales Charity]

Their steps must really be retraced! They need that badly