Cross River Court Restrains Secondus From Resuming As PDP Chair
The wrangling within the Peoples Democratic Party is assuming a new dimension with multiple court orders which apparently frustrate the peace-making move by some elders within the party.
The party’s Chairman, Uche Secondus, had resumed at the party’s headquarters in Abuja on Friday after a Kebbi State High Court on Thursday reinstated him as the party’s chair. He had been suspended by a Rivers State High Court last week.
But hours later, a high court sitting in Cross River State on Friday granted an interim order restraining Secondus from resuming office as PDP chair.
The order is coming just as Secondust is set to preside over the National Executive Committee meeting of the party scheduled to hold in Abuja on Saturday.
The presiding judge, Edem Kooffreh, gave the order while ruling on a motion ex parte marked HC/240/2021, and filed by an aggrieved member of the party, Enang Wani. The PDP and Secondus are respondents in the suit.
The court barred Secondus from presiding over any meeting of the party until the motion is heard.
“An order of interim injunction restraining the first defendant (Secondus) from presiding over the national executive committee meeting of the 2nd Defendant scheduled to hold on Saturday, the 28th of August, 2012 or any subsequent meeting of the national executive committee of the second defendant and from presiding over any meeting of any organ of the second defendant or attending any of such meetings of functions in the capacity of national chairman of the party or in any other manner or form attempting to forcefully gain entrance into any such meetings or into the premises of the second defendant as national chairman of the party pending the hearing and determination of the motion on notice,” the judge ruled.
The court also restrained the PDP from recognising or granting Secondus the powers due to the office of the national chairman.
“An order of interim injunction restraining the second defendant, its members, officers and agents from recognising the first defendant as its national chairman or from according to him any of the powers, rights or privileges due to the holder of the office of the National chairman of the 2 Defendant pending the hearing and determination of the motion on notice,” the ruling reads.
Kooffreh also ordered that the notice of the ruling be served to the parties by substituted means by “pasting at the entrance of the national secretariat of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at Wadata Plaza, Plot 1970, Michael Okpara Street, Wuse Zone 5, Abuja, in the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria and by publication in two (2) National Newspapers in Nigeria”.
