Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, on Friday, asked an Abuja high court sitting at Maitama to dismiss the suit challenging the waiver granted him by the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to contest presidency under its platform.
Atiku who approached the high court through his lawyer, Mr. Ricky Tarfa, SAN, challenged the propriety of the suit filed against him by a dissatisfied member of the party in Adamawa state, insisting that his re-admission into the PDP followed due process.
In a preliminary objection he filed against the suit, the embattled presidential hopeful of the PDP, urged presiding Justice Ishaq Bello to dismiss the legal action instituted against him, contending that the plaintiff was a busy-body who has resorted to cry more than the bereaved.
He averred that not only was the suit grossly incompetent on the grounds that the plaintiff failed to place sufficient facts showing that the waiver granted him in 2010 was illegal, but that he equally failed to channel his grievance before the appropriate authority for adjudication.
He maintained that the inability of the plaintiff to explore and exhaust the internal mechanisms of the party as provided in the constitution of the PDP as amended in 1999, rendered the suit incompetent.
“The internal mechanism provided for under the PDP Constitution is quite explicit and graduates from one lower level of the party to a higher one until the procedure is exhausted at the highest level.
“If the complaint relates to ordinary membership, the level at which the matter should be taken up is the ward level. If no satisfactory redress is obtained the aggrieved party must take his case to the local government level executive body of the party; and thereafter to the state level. Ultimately, the aggrieved party may go further to the national level by way of appeal from one stage to another as stipulated in Article 21.2 of the PDP Constitution.
Besides, he noted that the decision to sanction any misbehavior of a party member is vested in the Working Committee at the level where the mater arose, adding however that in meting out sanction, the affected person may only be suspended for a period not exceeding one month during which period ‘the member so suspended shall not lose his or her right to contest any election but shall be referred to the appropriate Disciplinary Committee as provided for in Article 21.4 of the PDP Constitution’.
It would be recalled that the plaintiff, Jada, sued the PDP, its national Chairman, Dr Okwesilieze Nwodo, national secretary of the party, Alhaji Abubakar Kawu Baraje and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, seeking an order of injunction restraining the 4th Defendant, Atiku, from parading or holding himself out as a validly registered member of the party or its presidential aspirant.
