The leadership crisis rocking the Ogun State chapter of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) may be further prolonged with the decision of the suspended but court-recognised Bayo Dayo-led State Working Committee (SWC) to conduct congresses that will produce new leaders for the party across the state, ‘DARE ODUFOWOKAN, Assistant Editor, reports.
If information emanating from the secretariat of the Ogun State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Abeokuta, the state capital, is anything to go by, then the faction of the opposition party loyal to former lawmaker representing Ogun East Senatorial District at the National Assembly, Senator Buruji Kashamu, will next month hold congresses across the state to elect new leaders for the party following the expiration of the four-year tenure of the current occupiers of party positions across the state.
While efforts to confirm the development from Engineer Bayo Dayo, the factional state chairman, proved abortive as he could not be reached on phone as at the time of going to press, party sources said the PDP loyal to Kashamu in Ogun State, as a law abiding group, will not allow illegal extension of tenure anywhere in the state, hence the decision to promptly conduct congresses to “elect new party officials in line with party constitution and the various court judgements that have been upholding the Bayo Dayo-led party executive in the state.”
An internal memo titled “Special Announcement”, a copy of which was sighted by our correspondent, informed party chieftains and members that on the 7th day of March, ward congresses will hold across the state “to elect ward executives and three ad-hoc delegates, while local government congresses will hold on March 21 to elect LGA party executives and national delegates. The state congress, to elect new state executive officers, according to the memo, is expected to hold on April 4th, 2020.
“The decision to hold congresses as at when due by the PDP leadership recognized by the courts in Ogun State is another example that the Bayo Dayo led executives are not the problems with our party. Rather, the whole world can now see for a fact that we are a group of law abiding and patriotic party men and women. The four year tenure of the current officials ends soon. Remember they were elected in 2016. This is the right leadership to hold the congresses and that is exactly what we are about to do,” a chieftain of the PDP in Remo North, told The Nation.
But the alleged planned congresses are despite the rejection of the Kashamu faction by the National Working Committee (NWC) of the PDP led by National Chairman, Prince Uche Secondus. The NWC has not hidden its preference for the faction of the party loyal to former House of Representatives member, Ladi Adebutu, who was also the gubernatorial candidate of the party for the 2019 governorship election at a point before the court declared Kashamu the rightful owner of the ticket.
On several occasions, the party rejected the declaration of Kashamu as the PDP candidate in Ogun State, insisting the Bayo Dayo-led executives are not recognised by the NWC and appealing judgements given in favour of the faction and Kashamu. Secondus and his team had submitted Adebutu’s name to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the party’s governorship candidate, insisting that it is only the NWC that can nominate a gubernatorial candidate for the party.
It is on the strength of this stand-off between Kashamu’s faction and the NWC that observers and analysts are of the opinion that rather than end the crisis within the party, the planned congresses, if held, will further compound the leadership crisis within the troubled state chapter of the PDP. “It is in the best interest of everybody if these planned congresses are aborted while the stakeholders from all the factions within the party in the state sit down to resolve the issues causing disaffection among them. Otherwise, PDP in Ogun will remain in tatters,” Hon. Kanmi Aretola, a former lawmaker and chieftain of the party warned.
One party, three chairmen
By the time the whirlwind raised by the 2016 state congresses of the PDP in Ogun state settled, the opposition party had produced three factional chairmen to lead three factions of the party, having other parallel twenty-six elective executive officers, senatorial party executive officers, LGA officers and ward executive committee members across the state. Three parallel state congresses had taken place in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital to split the chapter into factions and throw the party into what has now become an unending crisis.
At the time, the three leading gladiators in the struggle for the control of the party were Senator Kashamu, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole and Adebutu, then the member of the House of Representatives representing Remo Federal Constituency.
Supporters of Kashamu gathered at the party’s secretariat for the congress while those loyal to Bankole converged on Ake Palace Ground for another congress. Adebutu’s loyalists held their congress at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) Complex, Abeokuta. At the end of voting by delegates present at the congress, Kashamu’s faction produced Bayo Dayo, a former chairman of Ijebu North Local Government, as the state chairman of the party while Alhaji Semiu Sodipo was elected as the state secretary.
Loyalists of former Speaker Bankole, at the end of their own factional congress, produced a former Commissioner for Lands and Housing, Chief Wale Egunleti, as chairman and Hon. Johnson Olu-Fatoki as secretary. A former House of Assembly member who was also formerly the chairman of Ifo Local Government Area of the state, Hon. Sikirulai Ogundele, was elected as the state chairman of the PDP in Ogun state by the Adebutu faction while Hon. Durotolu Bankole emerged as the state secretary of the party.
Amidst several court cases and unending suspension and counter suspension, the factional leadership of the party refused to give in to one another even as the 2019 general election was fast approaching. The many interventions by the national leadership of the party failed to bring about peace. And when it was time for candidates to be selected, the crisis took turns for the worse, culminating in the embarrassing defeat of the once ruling party at the polls across the state during the general elections last year.
While the Bankole faction appeared to have fizzled out, the other two factions of the PDP held parallel governorship primaries in Abeokuta to elect governorship flag bearers for the party ahead of the 2019 polls. The group recognised by the national leadership of the PDP held its primaries at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) where Hon. Ladi Adebutu emerged as the candidate while Mr. Adeleke Shittu emerged as the governorship candidate of the party in a parallel exercise organised by Sen. Buruji Kasamu.
At the time the governorship primary elections were held, Kasamu stood expelled by the NWC of PDP following issues surrounding misconduct and anti-party activities. He challenged the decision of the party to expel him in court and soon got a judgment nullifying the expulsion and declaring him a bona fide member of the PDP in Ogun State with a right to seek election on the platform of the party. Expectedly, Kashamu replaced Shittu as the PDP governorship candidate for the 2019 guber election as the latter “voluntarily withdrew” from the race.
Discordant legal tunes
The parallel primary elections were to be followed by an embarrassing array of discordant court verdicts and unending spats as well as clashes between the two contending groups. Party members were left confused for the most part of the electioneering processes in the state as PDP chieftains spent the better part of the campaign periods moving from one court to another, seeking favourable judicial pronouncement that will force INEC to declare their candidates as the authentic ones or struggling to have an unfavourable verdict upturned.
The drama was indeed unending. In one of such dramatic legal tangos that characterized the period, on the second day of October, 2018, the appeal court upturned the judgment of the Federal High Court, Abeokuta. The high court had ordered INEC to receive and process the list of candidates from the Buruji Kashamu-backed PDP faction in Ogun State against the pleas of the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) which had submitted a list of candidates who emerged at the primaries it organised.
Kashamu became the governorship candidate of the faction led by Adebayo Dayo on the orders of the court, while the Oladipupo Adebutu, who is the candidate for the NWC-backed faction and had earlier been listed by INEC as the party’s candidate, was dropped. But the NWC appealed the judgment of the high court. It asked the appellate court to nullify the judgment of the lower court and reassign the matter to another judge on the grounds that it was not given a chance to be heard before the judgment was delivered.
But INEC eventually listed Kashamu on the ballot for the 2019 gubernatorial election in the state following the March 2019 decision of the Federal High Court, Abeokuta,, affirming Kashamu, as the governorship candidate of the PDP. The court dismissed the suit filed by a member of the House of Representatives, Oladipupo Adebutu, challenging the nomination of Kashamu as the party’s candidate. The presiding judge, Justice Abubakar Shittu, held that the case was statute-barred, having been caught up with the fourth alteration.
The court held that the cause of action arose on the April 12, 2018, whereas the suit was filed in December 2018. It further held that the plaintiffs (PDP and its officers) were stopped from re-litigating the issue of who has power to conduct primary elections of the PDP in the state and submit the list of candidates.
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