Sheriff’s PDP Faction Terribly Deficient – Hon Mohammed

BY CHAMBERLAIN ODEY, JOS – The Ali Modu Sheriff-led faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has been described as “terribly deficient and lacking what it takes to get the PDP acts together”, even as the faction continues to look enabled by the recent judgement of the Appeal Court sitting in Port Harcourt.
Speaking in the wake of recent outings by the Sheriff faction and its evident disposition to introduce leadership crisis into the Plateau chapter of the PDP, led by Hon Damishi Sango, a former commissioner for Information in Plateau state, Hon Abubakar Mohammed Badu said the Sheriff faction, despite the Appeal Court verdict, is hamstrung structurally and administratively.
According to Mohammed, in the first instance, the said judgement benefits only Sheriff as ‘chairman’, the secretary, and treasurer of the faction, noting that these three executive members do not form a quorum as stipulated in the constitution of the party, and as such the three cannot constitute the national working committee, NWC, and to that extent cannot summon a meeting of the national executive committee, NEC which is the statutory organ that can deliberate and take decisions in relation to chapters chairmen who are also members of the NEC.
Mohammed pointed out that, the more serious problem with the Sheriff faction is that the vacant positions left by some of the executive committee members who resigned their appointments have not been filled according to how the party constitution stipulates regarding such development, and this confers no authority on those who have been acting on those positions, because their actions and decisions thereto remain null and void, ab initio.
As provided for by the party constitution, any time such vacancy
exists in the national working committee, NWC of the party, the same local government area or constituency or zone or state where the former executive member hails from is to be allowed to produce a candidate or a replacement for the vacancy.
Mohammed noted that unfortunately the Sheriff faction has been
proceeding and acting, including making claims and decisions without recourse to this constitutional wisdom.
Again, Mohammed pointed out that the chairmanship of a political party such as Sheriff or any other contender is claiming, does not have executive powers. Invariably, argued Mohammed, Sheriff as ‘chairman’ of the party lacks executive fiat, implying that he cannot make pronouncements on the office of a state chairman of the party outside consideration of any such issue by a well attended meeting of the national executive committee of the party.
Accordingly, Mohammed dismissed a visit by some group of the state PDP and the claims credited to Sheriff in respect of the status of the leadership of the party in Plateau as “idle and drowning hallucination”, even unnecessary because it is expected that every member of the party should have a working and operational knowledge of its constitution.
Mohammed said the guests of Modu Sheriff from Plateau may be paid political dirty jobbers, who at best are well wishers of Ali Modu Sheriff. Recalling the due process and internal decorum that produced the present leadership of the PDP in Plateau state, Mohammed said Sheriff’s visitors have no case because they did not participate in the process, or make a case against the outcome and aftermath of the congresses as provided for in the party constitution.