Posted by By MODESTUS CHUKWULAKA, Abuja on
A candidate for the post of deputy national legal adviser in last weekend's Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) convention, Chief Peter Mgbenwelu, has alleged that the list of national officers from the South-East that emerged on the convention venue was 'monumentally tainted with illegality and under-hand practice."
A candidate for the post of deputy national legal adviser in last weekend's Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) convention, Chief Peter Mgbenwelu, has alleged that the list of national officers from the South-East that emerged on the convention venue was 'monumentally tainted with illegality and under-hand practice."
He said the authentic list of officers who were elected during the South-East zonal congress was adulterated at the convention ground with the result that his name was removed from the list and replaced with that of a person he had earlier defeated.
The party stalwart who said he was elected in the presence of the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, Enugu State Governor, Sullivan Chime, among other top shots of the party said he was declared winner in the presence of all, only for the list to be altered at the convention ground.
Mgbenwelu, who said he defeated four other candidates for the position which had been zoned to the South-East during the zonal congress of the PDP at Enugu on March 4, 2008, accused an unnamed serial fraudster of doctoring the list after the results had been publicly announced by the returning officer and former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Chief Chibudom Nwuche.
The aggrieved lawyer has already written to the chairman of the national convention of the party pleading that the true results of the zonal congress, which produced him as the deputy national legal adviser of the party, be honoured and used for the purposes of the convention.
In the letter also copied to President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, he said the action of substituting the names of duly elected party members with those who were not the choice of their people had offended the sensibilities of the decent and honest people of the South-East zone within the party.
'This also directly assaults the President Musa Yar'Adua's determination to instil discipline, ensure due process, transparency and rule of law within the body politick of the nation," he said.