Sylvester Idowu in Warri
Crisis has again hit the Delta State chapter of All Progressives Congress (APC) and might lose an opportunity of presenting a candidate in the upcoming by-election into the vacant Warri South 1 State Constituency seat if the national secretariat of the party fails to urgently resolve the leadership crisis in the state.
The party’s 2015 Delta State House of Assembly candidate for the Warri South 1 Constituency seat, Robinson Ariyo, who gave this hint at a press briefing in Warri, lamented that the party in the state lacked cohesion, as about six factions are laying claim to leadership.
Ariyo noted that the Prophet Jones Erue faction, which currently parades as the authentic leadership, had violated the spirit of the party’s constitution by filing a suit against the party, without exhausting internal provisions for redress, an action which punish us automatic expulsion from the party.
According to him, the APC in Delta State currently has no leadership as Erue’s-led council had been terminated by a subsisting court action instituted in 2014 by an aggrieved group in the party, led by Chief Adolo Okotie-Eboh, adding that Erue and those who joined him in 2015 to file the suit against the party had automatically been expelled by the party’s constitution.
“On April 30, 2015, the Adolo Okotie-Eboh -ed SEC successfully upturned the legal status of Jones Erue-led SEC in a Suit No. A/245/2014. Let’s bear in mind that an appeal has been filed against the judgement by the Erue’s led SEC. However, it is left for the APC to either act on the said judgement or pretend that its hands are tied by the judgement.
“APC has constitution and the law remains that every member of a political party is bound by the constitution of the party. Any member who files an action in Court of Law against the party or any of its officer on any matter relating to the discharge of duties, without first exhausting the avenues for redress provided for in the constitution shall automatically stand expelled from the party in filling such action.
“No appeal against expulsion stipulated in this clause shall be entertained until the withdrawal of the action from court by the members,” he said.
However, in its reaction to the development, the Erue-led executive council, through its acting Publicity Secretary, Leonard Obibi, said the alarm raised by Ariyo was an overreaction, noting that besides acting subjudice, he was not in a position to determine whether internal mechanisms were duly exhausted.
“The matter to which he referred, the foundation of this matter he’s raising is a matter that is already at the Court of Appeal, besides that he himself has taken the matter to the court for interpretation and if he has taken a matter to the court and he’s now addressing a press briefing, it is considered as subjudice.
“Be that as it may, I don’t think this is a subject that is of any major distraction to our party at this time because as far as we are concerned we have acted within the ambit of the law in both of the party and of the nation’s constitution and to that extent we feel justified in our actions.
“It is my opinion that he’s not in a place to judge whether indeed internal processes were duly satisfied, that is the duty of the National Working Committee or the National Executive Committee of the party,” Obibi said.
