PDP crisis: Court declines to stop INEC from recognising Anyanwu’s sack

THE Federal High Court sitting in Abuja has declined to grant an application the embattled National Secretary of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Senator Samuel Anyanwu, filed to restrain the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, from giving effect to his removal as the party’s scribe.

Specifically, Anyanwu, in the motion ex-parte filed through his team of lawyers, led by Mr. Ken Njemanze, SAN, prayed the court to bar the electoral body or its agents from receiving or acting upon any correspondent or submission from the PDP, unless such documents were signed by him.

He further applied for an injunction to restrain the National Chairman of the party, Umar Damagun, from forwarding any correspondence, document or written submissions to INEC without his own signature.

However, instead of granting the prayers, the court, in a ruling delivered by Justice Inyang Ekwo, directed the Applicant to go and put all the defendants in the matter, including the INEC, on notice. 

Justice Ekwo held that the defendants should be served with all the necessary processes to enable them respond to the application. 

The court stressed that notwithstanding an affidavit of urgency filed by Anyanwu, it could not grant the reliefs without hearing from the other parties. 

It held that his prayers were not such that could be granted on the strength of an ex-parte motion. 

Consequently, the court, after ordering the Applicant to serve all the processes, adjourned the matter till February 24 to enable the defendants appear and show cause why Anyanwu’s reliefs should not be granted.

It will be recalled that the Supreme Court had on Tuesday, slated March 10 to also hear an appeal the embattled PDP’s national scribe filed to challenge his sack by the Court of Appeal in Enugu.

A five-member panel of the apex court, led by Justice Ibrahim Saulawa, okayed accelerated hearing of the case.

The appellate court had in a judgement delivered last December, upheld a High Court verdict that sacked Senator Anyanwu and recognized  Sunday Ude-Okoye as the authentic national scribe of the party.

The court held that Anyanwu’s continued stay in office as national secretary was in breach of PDP’s constitution, having contested and emerged as the party’s candidate in the governorship election that held in Imo State last year.

Dissatisfied with the concurrent judgements of the two courts, Anyanwu approached the Supreme Court to set them aside.

The Board of Trustees, BOT, and the National Working Committee, NWC, of the PDP had in line with the subsisting judgements, endorsed Chief Ude-Okoye as the national secretary of the party. Anyanwu outrightly rejected their decisions, insisting that the position was still the subject of an ongoing litigation.

Culled from Vanguard