Senator Ahmed Makarfi is not the rightful chairman of the caretaker committee of the Peoples Democratic Party, court has ruled.
The Port Harcourt Appeal Court made the affirmation on Friday after it nullified the PDP national convention in Port Harcourt that established Makarfi’s committee and described the process that led to it as an abuse of the court process.
Two out of the three member-panel, Justice B.G Sanga and Justice A.B Gumel, in their judgment said the convention disobeyed the court order and the court would not close its eyes on such illegality.
The panel upheld the judgment of Justice Ibrahim Buba and set side the judgment of Justice Muhammed Liman of Port Harcourt Federal High Court.
The judges said Senator Markarfi , Professor Wole Oladipo, PDP, INEC, Inspector General of Police and DSS are to pay the cost of N100, 000 to Senator Ali Modu Sheriff.
Meanwhile one of the Appeal court members, Justice Orji Abadua dismissed all the judgment of the other judges.
She held that the PDP national convention was in line with the 2012 amended PDP constitution and not an abuse of court process.
The judge after setting aside the decisions of the other judges, stated that Ali-Modu Sheriff had no powers to cancel PDP national convention and awarded N100, 000 cost against Senator Ali-Modu Sheriff.
Meanwhile lawyer to PDP, Oladeji Laminkanra SAN told correspondents that his client will go to Supreme court to appeal the judgment. To which end,the sacked Senator Ahmed Markafi-led, National Caretaker Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has vowed to challenge the Court of Appeal’s Judgement replacing Makarfi with Ali Modu Sheriff as chairman of the party.
The Makrfi led faction’s position was made known by the National Publicity Secretary of the Committee, Mr Dayo Adeyeye, in Abuja on Friday.
Adeyeye said the judgement was a “big disappointment, travesty and miscarriage of justice”.
“The minority judgement is very sound in law, logic and fact. It gives us hope that we will have our day in the Supreme Court,” he said.
“Whereas the lead judgement left out the main issues and laboured unconvincingly to work to a preconceived answer, the minority judgement thrashed all the issues and upheld the judgement of the High Court in Port Harcourt, delivered by Liman J on July 4, 2016. `
“We will certainly appeal to the Supreme Court. No reconciliatory effort will stop it. We need the Supreme Court to make a pronouncement on the issue, once and for all.”
