PDP crisis: Lagos faction vows to sue national secretary for contempt

The reinstated Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party in Lagos State, Dr Dominic Adegbola, has indicated plans to take legal action against the party’s National Secretary, Senator Ibrahim Tsauri, on allegations of contempt in the crisis over the chairmanship seat in the state.

Justice Oyekan Abdullahi of the Lagos High Court, on June 22, removed Dr Adedeji Doherty as the substantive Chairman of the Lagos PDP and reinstated Adegbola, who had held the office of the state PDP Chairman in acting capacity for 90 days.

Adegbola and Doherty, in an interview with Saturday PUNCH, expressed mixed reactions to the ruling. The latter, who stated that the judgment was being appealed, argued that his rival had never served as a substantive chairman.

But Adegbola hailed the decision of the court, saying, “We are law-abiding. The judge has given her ruling and said nobody should impede the execution of this judgment or she would wield the big stick against anybody who does that. So far, I still hear Doherty saying he is still the chairman.

“Even the National Secretary of our party wrote a letter to the Lagos State Independent Electoral Commission. He said because they have appealed, Doherty should still be recognised as the chairman of the party, simply because they have appealed, which sounds uninformed to me.”

According to the PDP chairman, the LASIEC chairman is a retired chief judge, who knows the law.

“She dismissed that letter and is still dealing with me as the chairman of the party. But for the National Secretary of our party to write that kind of letter disobeying the court orders, we are suing him for contempt of court.

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“Let him go there and defend himself. We are not the law, we didn’t make the law and the person who pronounced the judgment is there. I’m sure they will deal with him according to the law,” Adegbola said.

Declaring his desire for Lagos PDP to progress, he said Tsauri’s action was capable of drawing the party back.

The PDP chairman said, “It is capable of inflaming the tension of the crisis in the party because even those who know the right thing will feel that they have the backing of the National Secretary, so they will go along with him. We don’t want that.

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 “We have gone back to the court to ask the court to deal with the situation. We are still discussing; hopefully, the National Secretary will realise his mistake and withdraw that letter. If he doesn’t, the court will take its decision.”

When contacted, the PDP National Publicity Secretary, Mr Kola Ologbondiyan, told Punch he was unaware of Adegbola’s desire for litigation against Tsauri.

Ologbondiyan, in a terse response, said, “I don’t have any information on that yet.”

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