Court stops PDP’s special convention

An Abuja High Court on Thursday ordered the Peoples Democratic Party not to conduct its proposed special convention to elect its national officers.
This will be pending the determination of the substantive suit brought against it by some members of the party.
But the court held that it cannot restrain Alhaji Bamanga Tukur from discharging his duties as the National Chairman of the party.
On the relief questioning the appointment of acting National Working Committee members by the party’s National Executive Committee at its meeting of June 20, 2013, the presiding judge, Justice Suleman Belgore, refused the relief.
Belgore said the action cannot be nullified as it was not part of the prayers sought by the plaintiff in the originating summons.
However, Justice Belgore gave an order restraining the Jerry Gana-led Special National Convention Committee from going ahead to organise the convention, which has been scheduled for August 31.
The suit was instituted by three members of the party: Abba Yale, Yahaya Sule and Bashir Maidugu.
Similarly, ruling on an application dated and filed on July 12, 2013 by counsel to the PDP, Onyechi Ikpeazu (SAN), challenging further jurisdiction of the court when the members of the party’s NWC, upon which the plaintiffs had sued the PDP, have resigned their offices, the judge said the court has jurisdiction to continue with the suit.
Ikpeazu had submitted that since the members of the NWC had resigned, no new relief exists in the originating summon.
He said: “For the plaintiffs to question the propriety of persons appointed into acting capacity as national officers of the PDP amounts to a new cause of action.
“The names of affected members of the NWC have been removed from the case by the court; they have resigned their positions therefore, the case cannot be judicially determined” Ikpeazu submitted just as he prayed the court to uphold his application.”
But the court held that the issue in question as argued by the plaintiffs’ counsel, Jubril Okutepa (SAN), bordered on the legality of the action of the PDP, which he claimed were compounded following the appointment of persons in an acting capacity without conducting an election.
Belgore ruled: “This court disagrees with the submissions of counsel to the defendant that the matter is spent and amounts to an academic exercise. This case is alive and not academic, it is not spent. A suit is academic if it has no practical utilitarian value. Therefore, this court has jurisdiction to continue hearing of the suit.”
The court also aligned with the submissions of Okutepa that the PDP ought not to have taken action by appointing acting national officers, itself being a party in the pending suit.
Justice Belgore described the action of the PDP as an affront on the court and an effort to circumvent the course of justice as well as undermine the court, adding that the defendant cannot foist a fate accompli on the court.
Belgore said: “It amounts to recklessness of a high degree for the PDP to do or take action that has direct effect on a case that is before the court. The emphatic point is that the PDP is a party in the suit and subjected under the court; therefore the PDP is obliged to await for the outcome of the suit before taken action.”