Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, has responded to a comment by former president Goodluck Jonathan on the alleged anomaly of removal of a party’s National Chairman by a ward chairman.
ThisNigeria reports that Jonathan, while speaking in Abuja on Thursday during the celebration of Prof. Mike Ozekhome’s (SAN) 67th birthday criticised a Supreme Court judgment that allows a ward chairman to suspend the national chairman of a political party, calling it a “troubling absurdity that exists only in Nigeria.”
“We can’t have a situation where a ward chairman can expel a national chairman. It defies logic and undermines our system.
“Such rulings create instability, affecting everyone, including those who might currently feel victorious,” he said.
Reacting to the comment, the FCT Minister, while speaking during a luncheon in honour of the 10th Rivers State Assembly on Saturday, stated that a suspended member of a party cannot continue to hold the position they were appointed into.
Wike said, “I overhead some leaders in Mike Ozekhome’s book launch. It is so unfortunate. I don’t want to reply to things. I heard some leaders say how can a ward chairman remove a national chairman.
“No ward chairman removed a national chairman. What the ward did was to suspend the national chairman from the party. When they suspend you from the party, can you still hold that position as national chairman?”
The Minister also took a swipe at the Rivers Governor, Siminalayi Fubara, over his comments on the past President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Chief O.C.J Okocha, SAN; former Chairman of the State Council of Traditional Rulers, Eze Sergeant Chidi Awuse and a Rivers leader, Chief Ferdinand Alabraba.
Wike described Fubara as one who treated the people who ensured his election as the state governor badly.
He said, “Chief Ferdi and OCJ, Chief Awuse, I hear that three of you are the wise men. Awuse was sick, and in a coma in London, one of the wisemen was removed as chairman of Rivers State Traditional Council. When the other wiseman(OCJ) was called to the bar, this man was not in primary school. This man has a son who is a Ph.D. holder. I’m happy, I’m not the only one that he has shown ingratitude. He has shown ingratitude to the wisemen. He came out on national television to say these are the wisemen who stood firm for me when the decision was taken. If you are a bad man, you are a bad man.
“He insulted legal icons by addressing them as “so-called legal luminaries”. Shame! Power, that is why you have to be careful who you give power to. We never knew we were living with a snake, but we will continue to thank Almighty God every day. You can imagine where I would have been today, where my wife and children would have been, not knowing that we are living with a serpent.”
He stated that the men took risks to ensure that Fubara won the election, adding that he (Wike) could not forgive the governor and pretend that nothing had happened.
“We’ve shown we are not a Jangilova state where we are being pushed. We are not like other states. You have shown capacity and shown that money can’t move you. Other states should emulate from you. They seized their salaries and allowances, saying they would come and beg; are you begging today? Will you beg tomorrow? You’ve told them to get the hell out that you’ll stand firm to do what is right. Tomorrow, people will look for you to stand firm. You may have lost something, but it is a sacrifice.
“This is Rivers State. Nobody will conquer us. An illiterate said anything that deals with state matters must come to the State High Court. Shame! If you don’t know anything, say you don’t know it. The State Assembly is challenging an illiterate government that they have no right to be spending without a budget, and therefore, CBN, accountant-general, can not continue to release funds when it is not being budgeted. The right place to sue is at a Federal High Court because the CBN is involved.
“For you to conduct an LGA election, they must follow a procedure laid by the electoral act. And INEC is the custodian of voters’ registers, so if they don’t follow the procedure, INEC should not release the register and to stop INEC, you will go to the Federal High Court, not State,” he said.
Wike urged the Nigerian Bar Association to secure the indpendence of the judiciary, lamenting that the association had been been polluted politically.
“With due respect to Sir OCJ Okocha, but the NBA has not solved the problem of stopping lawyers from jumping to media houses to speak uninformed because they’ve been paid to do so.
“I’ve been in the political space for 25 years without interruption, so I know the gimmicks. What most politicians do when they want to reach out to a judge and it’s impossible, they come out and write a petition against the judge because the judge wants to do the right thing.
“We’ve always regarded court judgments, and we have never one day written any petition against any judge in spite of all the expatriate orders. The governor and his Attorney General secured an expatriate order against an Appeal Court judgment.
“Six High Court judges gave ex-parte orders 1 to 10. Have we ever written petitions? Have we gone on television to castigate them? All we say is that they are not the final court. We tell our lawyer to go and appeal,” he said.
Also speaking on the PDP leadership crisis, the Minister revealed that the acting Chairman of the Party, Umar Damagum never threw his weight behind him (Wike).
He said: “In PDP they said that the chairman should go. I am not his friend. He never supported me. We agreed that Damagum should complete the tenure of Ayu. But let me tell you why you should be careful in trusting people.
“At the meeting we agreed that we should go and seek interpretation of the PDP Constitution. The 2015 Constitution was not the same as 2017. There was a problem with the 2015 constitution.
“To cure the error, in 2017 we had an amendment of the Constitution when we now said that there should be two deputy chairmen where if the person who is chairman from that zone has a problem the deputy chairman should be able to complete his tenure.
“We never zoned to North West, North East; we zoned North and south. Chairman North, Secretary goes to South. When it is zoned to the north anybody who is a chairman should come from the north.
“They made it look as if it is zoned to North central, North East and northwest. But we never did that. This problem came and we said it is better we go to the court to seek interpretation of the party Constitution.
“Where the chairman has a problem the deputy chairman from that zone should complete his tenure. If you want the chairman, it should be from the National convention.”
