The newly elected South West Zonal Legal Adviser of the Peoples Democratic Party, Barrister Ojo Williams, has questioned the legality of the continuous occupation of the office of the National Secretary of the party by Prof. Olawale Oladipo.
Williams said Oladipo has since been ousted by a judgement of the Court of Appeal on November 6, 2013.
He said: “Since the January 11, 2013 judgment of Federal High Court presided over by Justice Abdul Kafarati was nullified by the Appeal Court on November 6, 2013, he ought to have vacated the office of the PDP National Secretary.”
Williams said in a statement issued in Osogbo, Osun State on Tuesday that it was time that things were done rightly in the party by telling Prof. Oladipo that he should stop parading himself as the PDP National Secretary since the Appeal Court judgment invalidating the Federal High Court judgment that paved the way for his assumption of office was yet to be set aside by a superior court.
He said it was on record that the Court of Appeal, in the judgement read by Justice J. T. Toh, held that the lower court acted in error by granting the declarative reliefs sought by the plaintiffs since the former National Secretary, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, was not a party to the suit that nullified the South West congress that produced him.
Williams, who is also from Osun State like Prof. Oladipo, said with the Appeal Court judgment of November 6, 2013, which reinstated Oyinlola as the National Secretary and Oyinlola’s defection to the All Progressives Congress, the Deputy National Secretary of the PDP was the rightful person to have assumed the office of the National Secretary in an acting capacity.
He said Oladipo did not participate in the National Convention that produced the present National Working Committee members.
Rather, he was installed consequent upon the court judgment sacking Oyinlola.
Ojo argued that since the same court already declared Oyinlola’s sack illegal, there is no legal justification for his (Oladipo) occupation of the office of the PDP National Secretary.
He said this is more so that the Appeal Court judgment had not been set aside and the execution of the judgment was not stayed.
The Zonal Legal Adviser went further to state that in another suit urging the court to compel the Independent National Electoral Commission to recognise Oladipo as the National Secretary of the PDP, the counsel to INEC, Vilba Kintai, told the court on June 25, 2014 that the commission “does not recognize Prof. Oladipo who was nominated by the South West Caretaker Committee as the National Secretary of the PDP because the party’s leadership had not produced any court order to that effect”.
Williams added in the statement: “Questions that must therefore be asked are; has INEC changed its position? Has the Appeal Court judgment invalidating the Federal High Court judgment that removed Oyinlola and paved way for the emergence of Prof Oladipo been set aside by a superior court or its execution stayed? In the face of these legal hurdles, can Prof Oladipo be said to be validly occupying the office of the PDP National Secretary? Certainly the answer is No.
“We therefore call on the PDP not to allow any illegality to taint its National Convention by Prof Oladipo’s cancerous intermeddling.”
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