Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Nyesom Wike, has declared that Thursday’s Supreme Court judgment and Wednesday’s Federal High Court judgment on the leadership crisis in the African Democratic Congress, ADC, have left the party in a precarious legal position.
Wike also declared that Thursday’s judgment of the apex
court which extinguished the Tanimu Turaki-led faction of the Peoples
Democratic Party, PDP, has laid to rest the crisis in the party.
Wike, who spoke during an interview at his Abuja residence
on Thursday evening, said the apex court’s verdict had rendered the ADC
structurally vulnerable, arguing that the dismissal of the Turaki appeals also
dealt a collateral blow to any political calculations built around that
platform.
He insisted that prominent figures who abandoned the PDP for
the ADC — including former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and former Senate
President David Mark — would not be welcomed back into the party’s fold.
Asked to comment on the ADC case as a lawyer, Wike said,
“ADC is neither here nor there. Whichever way you look at it, there’s no way it
has given them any upper hand.”
Wike explained that the Supreme Court, in a related ruling
on the ADC matter, vacated the status quo ante bellum order that had been
sustaining certain arrangements within that party and directed that proceedings
return to the Federal High Court for continuation.
He said the effect of that vacation was significant, noting
that the Federal High Court had already issued a separate judgment hostile to
the ADC’s position.
“ADC is still in a big problem. Whether they go back to the
Federal High Court, that means the Federal High Court has to continue until the
final judgment of that court is given. But before that final judgment comes,
there is already a judgment by the same Federal High Court,” he said.
On the broader PDP ruling, Wike said the Supreme Court had
proved beyond dispute that there was only one PDP, led by National Chairman
Mohammed Abdulrahman, and that the convention of November 15 and 16, around
which the rival Turaki faction had anchored its claim, had been set aside in
its entirety. “There are no more factions in PDP,” he said. “PDP has gone to
rest.”
Wike was categorical that those who left the party for the
ADC in the heat of the internal crisis were not candidates for a reconciliatory
return.
He drew a distinction between members he described as
“natural inhabitants” of the party — people who had drifted away out of
uncertainty over who held the authority to sign nomination forms and process
documents with INEC — and those he regarded as principal actors in the
attempted takeover.
“Those who originally left from the outset, who wanted to
bring the people with natural liabilities into the party — we don’t want to
take those ones back.
“My brother, Mark, and my friend, Atiku, who are here now,
are holding a coalition meeting. We are not part of that. I don’t know where
they will be heading to now,” he said.
Wike also addressed questions around the status of Senator
Samuel Anyanwu as the PDP National Secretary, dismissing suggestions that any
court ruling had legitimately suspended or removed him.
He said the committee that recommended Anyanwu’s suspension
had produced a report that was never ratified by the appropriate party organ,
rendering the suspension legally inoperative.
“The FCT High Court cannot say we will stand by the
suspension. Whose suspension? There was no suspension,” he said, adding that
the PDP had, in any case, lifted any outstanding disciplinary measures and
allowed those affected to contest at the national convention.
“So, assuming but not conceding that Sam Anyanwu and others
were suspended by the other group, the same party has said we have forgiven
you. Come and contest election. And they contested and were voted in at the
National Convention. So the issue of suspension no longer arises,” he said.
The minister said the series of judgments across multiple
courts — from the Federal High Court through the Court of Appeal to the Supreme
Court — had consistently validated the convention that produced the current
national leadership of the PDP, and that any further attempts by the Turaki
camp to pick at procedural threads would come to nothing.
“In politics, you must be ready to make sacrifices.
Everything they have done has been set aside,” he said.
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