Chairman of the National Caretaker Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Ahmed Makarfi has said that the party may cease to exist if the crisis in the party is not quickly resolved. Makarfi, who spoke yesterday when he received party supporters from Borno State, the home state of Senator Ali Modu Sheriff, also said the party may likely witness several court cases if the February 17 Court Appeal judgement is not fully complied with.
He regretted that the court judgement has been reduced to only one person to the exclusion of other persons affected by the judgement. Reacting to the recommendation of the Governor Seriake Dickson reconciliation committee for national convention to hold in June this year, Makarfi described this as deceptive.
This, according to him, is because the Appeal Court justices said the tenure of three national officers would expire in August this year. “So, how are you going to conduct convention in June? Another fraud. Then the tenure of 18 other officers will expire June/July next year, so you can’t even elect them this year, you have to wait till that time.
So what are you going to convention for? Except if that judgement is reversed by the Supreme Court. “If it is upheld, God forbid, it basically means that there can be only convention in August to elect Chairman and Secretary and Auditor, and I tell you before August, there will be no PDP then as we know it now. “If we say people should wait under the circumstances, it is not possible, and not to talk to wait until June next year for the rest of the national officers, 17 or 18 of them to be elected.
“Let people think wisely and even know what the court said. We are praying and hoping that justice will be done so that this quagmire can be laid to rest. “Of course, nobody will be averse to any true and genuine reconciliation. None of us has a personal interest here, and our duty will terminate when those people who put us here want us to go, we will go,” he added.
According to him, the court had ordered a return to the status quo ante before the botched May 21 national convention in Port Harcourt. “For your information, the Court of Appeal judgement did not even mention Sheriff by name.
The Court of Appeal judgement only said the status before 21st May 2016 should be reverted to,” Makarfi observed.
He added that Sheriff was busy inaugurating parallel executive committees of the party in many states, which he said, was a violation of the Appeal Court judgement. “This is recipe for disaster. Some people have learnt to go to court now. People are there taking record. If this is not reversed, in the next one or two months, other people will go to court challenging the decisions they will be making which means that we will never come out of this legal quagmire,” he predicted.
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