The current crisis over who should take over as the Acting National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress, after the Court of Appeal judgement that upheld the suspension of Adams Oshiomhole, is designed to pave the way for easy defection of Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State to another party, The Point’s investigation has revealed.
A source within the National Headquarters of the APC in Abuja revealed that most lovers of Obaseki in APC, after a meeting that followed his disqualification from the party, believed that, for him to defect legally to another party, there must be a noticeable crisis at the national level of the party.
The source, quoted the judgment of the Supreme Court, in the case of Hon. Ifedayo Abegunde, who was representing the Akure South/North Federal Constituency of Ondo State, and who defected from the Labour Party, as saying that there must be a noticeable division in the national structure of the party for an elected person to defect to another party.
In the judgement, the seven-man panel of Justices of the apex court declared Abegunde, who decamped from the LP to the now defunct Action Congress of Nigeria, as unfit to remain at the legislative house, following his illegal defection.
The court stressed that as at the time Abegunde defected to the ACN, there was no division in his parent party, LP. It maintained that the lawmaker’s defection to another party would have been justified if there was a division in the national structures of the LP, such that was capable of hampering the smooth operation of the party.
It was gathered that the decision of the Deputy National Secretary, Victor Giadom, to declare himself the Acting National Chairman of the party was part of the grand design to cause crisis within the national structure of the party and ensure easy defection for Obaseki.
Recall that Giadom, at a briefing at the party’s National Secretariat on Wednesday, said his pronouncement followed a meeting of the National Working Committee after Tuesday’s Appeal Court ruling upholding the suspension of the National Chairman.
But in a new twist to the crisis rocking the party, the party’s National Working Committee, on Wednesday afternoon, said it had ratified Abiola Ajimobi as the Acting National Chairman.
It also disowned Victor Giadom, insisting that his membership of the NWC ceased when he resigned to contest the Deputy Governorship position in Rivers State.
But, owing to ill- health, the APC NWC also said the party’s National Vice-Chairman (South-South), Hilliard Eta, should act in his stead.
However, in another twist to the crisis, a legal document has surfaced, from a group in the South-West, claiming that the position of the Deputy National Chairman, (South) of the APC is still vacant and that the party’s acting National Chairman, Abiola Ajimobi, is not eligible to occupy the seat.
The group’s lawyer, Babatunde Oke, said in a statement that the suit was instituted at the Federal High Court in Ado-Ekiti on February 12, 2020, against the APC National Working Committee and Ajimobi, asking the court, among other things, to fill up the position in line with the party’s constitution.
