Posted by By Jacob Edi, Abuja on
As the Amadu Ali faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) holds an emergency National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting Thursday, the other faction led by Shuaibu Oyedokun, has written the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) demanding recognition.
•Ali calls emergency NEC meeting
As the Amadu Ali faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) holds an emergency National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting Thursday, the other faction led by Shuaibu Oyedokun, has written the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) demanding recognition.
National Secretary of the Oyedokun-led Interim Management Committee, Prince Orji Nwafor-Orizu, in a two-page letter made available to Daily Sun, called on the electoral body not to recognize the Ahmadu Ali faction which it alleged is an illegal body.
Relying on the October 10, 2005 judgment of the High Court of Abuja, which nullified the method used to usher in the Ali-led National Working Committee (NWC), Nwafor-Orizu maintained that 'the PDP, as it stands today, has no legal persons steering its activities."
Consequently, the statement said it will inform INEC appropriately about its arrangements to conduct 'proper congresses and convention."
Nwafor-Orizu explained that the action of his faction followed series of meetings and consultations by those he said are 'founding fathers of the PDP, members of the Board of Trustees, governors, former executive members" to form an interim management committee to fill a vacuum within the party pending the conduct of proper elections by the group.
Efforts to get comments of INEC officials failed at the time of this report, but it was learnt that the electoral body will soon react.
It was not clear why the Ali-led PDP called for an emergency NEC, but sources said it may not be unconnected with the emergence of a new faction made up mainly of former officers of the party who left the party in controversial circumstances before the emergence of the NWC under Ali.
It was also learnt that the NEC meeting will receive the report of the National Reconciliation Committee, which was set up in the wake of the collapse of the tenure elongation project.