By Abiola Olawale
The Supreme Court, in a ruling on Friday, has nullified the judgments of the Court of Appeal and Federal High Court, which sacked Senator Samuel Anyanwu as the National Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
This is as the apex court affirmed Anyanwu as the authentic National Secretary of the PDP.
The ruling, which was delivered by a five-member panel of the apex court on Friday, held that the issue of who is the National Secretary of the PDP borders on the internal affairs of a political party, which is not justiciable.
Justice Jamilu Tukur, who delivered the lead judgment of the Supreme Court, consequently struck out the judgment of the trial court delivered in October last year and also set aside the majority judgment of the Court of Appeal, which had in December affirmed the sack of Anyanwu as PDP’s National Secretary.
The leadership of the main opposition party has been engulfed in crisis, which erupted after Anyanwu emerged as the governorship candidate of the party in Imo State around August 2023.
Following Anyanwu’s emergence, a section of the South East zonal stakeholders, at a meeting in Enugu, elected Hon. Sunday Ude-Okoye as Anyanwu’s replacement, claiming that the party’s guidelines provided that any party official that emerges as a candidate of the party for an election must relinquish his party position.
However, Anyanwu countered the nomination, insisting that such laws were not in the party’s constitution nor any official document of the party.
The development created a chasm among party stakeholders. While some members of the National Working Committee (NWC) and other stakeholders were in support of Anyanwu, other NWC members, including members of the party’s Board of Trustees (BoT) and governors’ forum, threw their weight behind Ude Okoye.
As the controversy raged, the matter was filed before a State High Court in Enugu and Court of Appeal, Enugu Division subsequently and they pronounced Ude-Okoye as the substantive National Secretary of the party.
