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Tag: PDP group

  • PDP group lauds judiciary over ruling on Rivers allocation

    PDP group lauds judiciary over ruling on Rivers allocation

    The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Youth Frontiers has commended the Federal High Court’s landmark ruling stopping the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) from releasing monthly allocations to the Rivers State Government. 

    This decision comes after Governor Siminalayi Fubara presented the 2024 budget to a four-member Rivers House of Assembly, violating Sections 91 and 96 of the 1999 Constitution.

    According to Justice Joyce Abdulmalik’s ruling, Governor Fubara’s actions constituted a “constitutional somersault and aberration” that must not continue. 

    The PDP Youth Frontiers at a press conference on Wednesday, praised the ruling, stating it revives hope in the judiciary as a guardian of Nigeria’s democracy.

    The court’s decision declared the four-member assembly’s actions void, referencing prior Federal High Court and Court of Appeal rulings that annulled its authority. 

    Comrade  Henry Owolabi, the National coordinator of the group, demanded an immediate reversal of all decisions made by the illegitimate assembly and a refund of illegally spent funds.

    Owolabi also urged Fubara to respect the party that gave him the platform to become governor and to retrace his steps to avoid further constitutional breaches. 

    He called on the PDP to provide guidance to the Rivers Assembly to prevent the people from suffering due to the governor’s actions.

    Owolabi emphasised the need for Governor Fubara to take corrective action, warning that persistence in his current path may necessitate further legal action.

    Read Also: PDP vows to resist alleged ploy to draft Amotekun for Ondo polls

    He added: “We are pleased that the ruling, in citing constitutional violations by Governor Siminalayi Fubara, was specific in stating that the decisions made by the four-member Fubara-backed assembly were void and referenced prior rulings by the Federal High Court and Court of Appeal that had annulled its authority.

    “For us, this implies that all other violations that Governor Fubara used the four-man assembly to illegally validate must also be reversed and this must be done immediately. We shall be setting up a team to identify and collate all such decisions and then take the necessary steps to ensure they are reversed. We hope Governor Fubara will not persist in his destructive recalcitrance that might necessitate our going to court to, again, compel him to do the right thing. 

    “We hope that Governor Fubara will explore the face-saving chance that this court ruling has provided to retrace his steps and return to respecting the PDP as the platform that magnanimously gave him the platform that made him the Rivers State Governor. 

    “This timely counsel becomes necessary to avert a situation where the PDP Youth Frontiers is compelled to take far-reaching actions to restore democracy in Rivers State, where the governor’s penchant for constitutional breaches has completely muddled the waters.

    “We call on our great party, the PDP, to take steps to stop further constitutional aberrations by providing the needed political guidance to the Rivers State House of Assembly to properly resume its functions of receiving and passing a legitimate 2024 budget for the state. This is to ensure that they prevent the people of the state from being plunged into suffering because of the governor’s error.

    “The party should also mandate its members in the state house of assembly to cause the parliament to trace all illegally spent funds and seek a refund of the same from Governor Fubara.“

  • PDP group slams Ogunlewe’s backing for Wike

    PDP group slams Ogunlewe’s backing for Wike

    The League of Yoruba Professionals in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has condemned former Minister of Works Senator Adeseye Ogunlewe for supporting Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike’s  ”indecent statement against the Yoruba”

    The Group’s Chairman Dr Adegoke Adaranijo, in a statement yesterday said it received with “dismay and total shock  the unwise pronouncements of Senator Ogunlewe in which he virtually derided his own people by defending Wike who insited on not apologising to the Yoruba  following his derided comment before the PDP’s December 9 national convention.

    The Group said “Wike publicly demeaned our people and our leaders as symbols of failure. “Even when all leaders in the Yoruba nation within the PDP fold had denounced Wike’s utterances as crude, uncouth, virtually uncivil and primitive, Ogunlewe, in his characteristic mischievous manner aligned himself with the traducer of his own people.

    “ Is Ogunlewe happy that our people are being lampooned and dishonoured in the market square? A true born Yoruba person will never partake in this crass idiocy.

    ”Former Governor of Ogun State, Aremo Olusegun Osoba even rose above partisan politics to demonstrate his anger against Wike’s immoral pronouncements. That is the way it should be,” the group said.

    The League demanded an immediate retraction of the defence of Wike by Ogunlewe, saying “at once Ogunlewe should tender a public apology to our people”.

  • PDP group cautions BoT

    PDP group cautions BoT

    The PDP-Renaissance Initiative (PRI) has raised the alarm over what it described as partiality playing out in the race for chairman.

    It unchecked the trend could  endanger its chances in the 2019 polls, the group said.

    The intra-party group asked the PDP Board of Trustees to borrow a leaf from the Senator Ahmed Makarfi-led National Caretaker Committee that has so far exhibited maturity, neutrality and decorum in the contest.

    The intra-party group urged the PDP to force aspirants to resign their membership of party organs, while Board of Trustees (BOT) members should eschew the display of open support for particular candidates.

    The statement by group’s Publicity Director. Felicia Osoba, pointed out that unlike its present posturing, the BOT should be seen to be neutral, unbiased and impartial in an intra-party contest.

    The PRI wondered why BOT member Prof. Jerry Gana is openly chaperoning and campaigning for Prof. Tunde Adeniran.

    Recalling the recent illegal pruning of contestants to two by a section of the trustees, PRI said that the issues it was raising had cast an unhealthy on the integrity of the entire PDP BOT.

  • Na’Abba lacks influence, says PDP group

    A group, Kano State PDP Frontiers, has described the resignation of former House of Representatives Speaker Ghali Umar Na’Abba as a non-issue.

    It said the politician “was of no value besides the relics of him serving in an office.”

    In a statement yesterday in Kano by the group’s Coordinator, Ahmed Sani Kabara, he said the party would not miss the former Speaker as “his presence is of no impact, so would his absence be.”

    The body said: “Na’Abba’s purported resignation from our great party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is nothing short of a publicity stunt and an attempt to re-launch himself, having lost public reckoning.

    “As far as we are concerned, and this is open secret for anyone to verify, Ghali Na’Abba has never been of any use to PDP. Rather, it is the party that has done everything for him; lifting him from a nonentity to national fame. It, therefore, amounts to betrayal and biting the hand that fed him for him to dump the party.

    “The former Speaker is known in the local chapter of the party and at the national level to exhibit traits that are self-centred and unhealthy for a democratic setting.’’

     

    Someone who always wants to lord himself over people should have himself to blame when the table is turned against him.”

    The group recalled that Na’abba “woefully lost his re-election bid to the House of Representatives in 2003 despite occupying the number four seat in the country. He is not known to have promoted any candidate at any level that eventually succeeds. When he vied for the Senate ticket in 2011, he could not garner appreciable votes.

    “Reading through Na’abba’s so-called letter of resignation, one comes across someone who is gone too deep in the self-destruct path of arrogance and self-indulgence and cannot afford to be a follower despite being a paper-weight politician.”

    Kabara told President Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP leadership not to be worried about the decision of the former Speaker, “as big name is not the same thing as big influence.”

     

     

  • Rivers PDP group insists on zoning

    Rivers PDP group insists on zoning

    Some Rivers State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) members, under the aegis of “The Rivers Renaissance”, have said they will only support the zoning arrangement in choosing the party’s standard bearer for the 2015 elections.

    In a statement yesterday announcing the birth of the group, the members pledged to work for President Goodluck Jonathan’s re-election.

    A member of the group’s organising committee, Mr. Soala West, said: “We will not support the imposition of candidates. We support the highest ideal of a democratic society; we support the liberty and right of franchise; we do not claim unusual strength; we only stand on the promises of God and the ideals of a democratic society.

    “We will support congresses to produce the party’s candidates. Nigeria, like Rivers State, is a multi-ethnic society and as a party of equitable progress, PDP founding fathers institutionalised zoning as the formula for distributing offices.”

  • PDP group asks INEC to deregister party

    PDP group asks INEC to deregister party

    . . . Insists Tukur must go

    The intra party crisis rocking the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has taken a new twist with a group within the party calling for its deregistration.

    The group, PDP Stakeholders Forum, at a press conference in Abuja on Tuesday, also said it has approached a Federal High Court seeking to nullify last Saturday’s convention of the party.

    Similarly, the group said it’s also seeking an order of the court for the removal of Alhaji Bamanga Tukur as the national chairman of the PDP.

    Controversial PDP youth activist, Ugochinyere Ikenga, who addressed the conference accused the party and Tukur of series of constitutional and procedural breaches in the conduct of the last convention.

    “In view of these, we have successfully instituted a law suit at the Federal High Court here in Abuja seeking an order of the court to among other things nullify the 2013 convention of the PDP, nullify the continued stay in office of Bamanga Tukur in view of his ineligibility to be chairman of our party by virtue of his non-membership of the party since his expulsion in 2001.

    “Tukur did not apply for, nor obtain the requisite waiver by the National Executive Committee of the party before offering himself for election into the office of national chairman in 2012.

    “The legal effect of the foregoing is that with an utterly flawed and incurably defective membership, the nomination, subsequent election and continued stay in office of Bamanga Tukur as chairman is fraudulent, illegal and unconstitutional.

    “Consequently, the non-membership of the PDP by Alhaji Bamanga Tukur had cast a very serious legal burden on his competence to vie for, hold and continued occupation of the office of national chairman of the PDP, and his refusal to call for a NEC meeting since 2012 amounts to a grave and unpardonable violation of the constitution of the PDP, ” Ikenga stated.