APC legal adviser recommends party’s vice chairman’s expulsion

Forum 1 year ago

APC legal adviser recommends party’s vice chairman’s expulsion

The National Legal Adviser of the ruling All Progressives Congress, Ahmad El-Marzuq, has recommended the expulsion of the National Vice Chairman for North-West, Mallam Salihu Lukman, for taking the ruling party and his leadership to court.

El-Marzuq’s suggestion was contained in a leaked ‘legal opinion’ written to the National Chairman of the party, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, dated April 28, 2023.

This was even as concerned members of the National Working Committee of the party set up a committee to look into lingering feud between Adamu and the North-West vice chair with a view to resolving the internal wrangling rocking the party.

The development is coming barely four days after Lukman dragged Adamu and the APC National Secretary, Senator Iyiola Omisore, to the court for alleged breach of the APC constitution by not convening the National Executive Committee meeting.

Lukman accused Adamu of running a one-man show and reducing the NWC members to a mere rubber stamp to approve important decisions he singlehandedly take.

But the crisis took a different twist when a leaked memo written by El-Marzuq, and made available to The PUNCH, recommended that the high-ranking member of the NWC be kicked out of the secretariat in line with the party Constitution.

The APC legal adviser said he had painstakingly gone through the reliefs sought and the affidavit in support of Lukman’s and found no breach as alleged.

Among other things, El-Marzuq deemed issues bordering on the management of political parties and internal affairs of the party to be outside the jurisdiction of the courts.

He wrote, “It is a settled law that no court has the jurisdiction to hear and determine complaints or matters pertaining to intra-party disputes of political parties. It has long been settled by the Supreme Court in Onuoha v. Okafor & Ors. (1983) 14 NSCLR 494 at 499 – 507 that, where the relief sought is on leadership of or intra-party dispute between members of same political party or between a member or and the political party, only the party can resolve the dispute.

“This is because a political party is a voluntary organisation or association. Persons join political parties of their own choice; therefore, where there is any internal disagreement, it must be resolved by a majority decision of the members. That being so, any dispute over its internal affairs is not justifiable and no court has jurisdiction to entertain a claim on such dispute.’

“However, a cursory look at Article 25.2 (i) of the Party’s Constitution would reveal that it is not mandatory to convene a meeting of the National Executive Committee every quarter as postulated by the plaintiff, rather it is at the discretion of the National Working Committee or at the request in writing by one-third of the members of the National Executive Committee.

“It is clear that the party did not breach any provision of its constitution by not calling for a meeting of NEC every quarter for the purpose of presenting activities of the party to the members of NEC as alluded to by the plaintiff and thus his suit ought to be dismissed by the court for lacking in merit.

“By resorting to a court action against the party, it is my recommendation that disciplinary measures, in accordance with the party’s constitution, should be meted out against the plaintiff particularly Article 21.5 (v) which states thus: ‘Any member who files an action in court of law against the party or any of its officers on any matter or matters relating to the discharge of duties of the party, without first exhausting the avenues for redress provided for in this constitution, shall automatically stand expelled from the party on filing such action and no appeal against expulsion as stipulated in this clause shall be entertained until the withdrawal of the action from court by the member’.”

When contacted, Lukman said, “My simple reaction is that I hope this will be tabled at the NWC meeting because it is only then it will become a threat.

“For now, the memo is just an opinion of the national legal adviser, but I will react to it at the appropriate time.”