I read with nostalgia, a letter purportedly written by Barrister Emmanuel Enoidem, the PDP National Legal Adviser to HE Gov. Seyi Makinde of Oyo State on his ill-conceived advise on the South West Congress of the Party.
I decided to take my time in the last 48 hours to see if Barrister Enoidom would deny authoring such spineless aberration and safe the PDP National Working Committee the unnecessary embarrassment of serially being identified with people who constantly threw caution into the winds and support illegality at every point of electing officers or making attempts to prematurely remove the validly elected ones. The situation in PDP today has been traced to the endless supports being accorded serial losers every by some members of the National Working Committee of the party and unfortunately, the BoT and NEC members who are the final arbiter on knotty issues don’t appear to be alive to their duties, they are either docile or deliberately silent or just incompetent to do it right or at worst simply corrupt.
The lengthy but watery epistle of Barrister Enoidem is fraught with unimaginable pieces of fraudulent and unpolished falsehood. It is unfortunate that his incoherent and disjointed padded denial of his obvious actions that is also bereft of intelligent presentation came out of slippery lips full of total insincerity.
Mr. Enoidem, if you remember, started his assignment as National Legal Adviser of the party shortly after the inauguration of the present leadership of PDP on a very faulty foundation with the worst legal advice that ended up DISSOLVING THE PDP STATE EXECUTIVES AND REPLACED SAME WITH A CARETAKER COMMITTEE, with their cronies in charge in Anambra state, that happened few weeks to the governorship of that state in 2018, you can imagine how insensitive they were.
Many party members were shocked and little did they know that Emmanuel Enoidem deliberately misled the party with intent to make quick money from the money bags that the dissolution of the party Executives in Anambra state favoured at that time and that singular action led to the woeful performance of our party in the governorship election in that state, the rest is history but it was obvious that the best Enoidem did for our party was not good enough to earn us any victory.
As if that was not enough, the crises rocking the entire six states of the South West Region today is the handiwork of Emmanuel Enoidem who has turned himself to the solicitor general between warring factions within the party and any identified interested bourgeoisie whom he set against themselves for him to take charge of the legal fees.
A typical example of the crafty legal discontent authored, monitored and spuriously implemented by Enoidem is the case of Osun State Chairman versus the Peoples Democratic Party.
It is on record that, instead of Enoidem to advise the National Executive Committee of PDP to Institute a National Disciplinary Committee to investigate all the trump charges and false allegations of malfeasance, maladministration and anti-party activities levelled against the State Chairman of the party by the some faceless individuals in Osun State, he went on and pushed the National Working Committee to flout the constitution of the party, lied about their investigations and flagrantly claimed to have affirmed all allegations against an innocent man, forced him to step aside from April 30, 2020 till October 30, 2020 when the Constitution of the party gave a maximum timeous frame of not more than 30 days. Will Enoidem claim ignorance of this flagrant violation of the constitution which his own team vetted, perused advised upon and signed into law?
Unfortunately for the party, Enoidem and his unprofessional conducts did not only advised the NWC to remove the party chairman in Osun State against the laid down rules and guidelines of the party constitution, he also advised them to replace him with the highest level of impunity, tricking the ignorant members of Osun State Working Committee to write a VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE against their chairman and also ended up urging the man to resign as a pre-condition to clear him of any misdemeanor as if the allegations were true, a condition which the chairman took as a slap his face and an attempt to destroy his family name and integrity, after having expended so much on the party, he was left with no option than to seek redress in the court of law.
Like I said above where there is injustice, the law provides solutions in the principle of _Ubi Jus Ibi Remidium_
The court process in Osun found the PDP culpable for outright violations of its own constitution and the constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria for failing to give the Osun State PDP Chairman fair hearing. Enoidem ended up as the legal contractor who took up the job of hiring lawyers led by Barrister N.O.O Oke SAN, a Senior Advocate, of Nigeria for the defendants, Enoidem is the one collecting millions of Naira from an interested billionaire business mogul who has been financing the crises in Osun state and giving the PDP legal team stipends, depending on his mood.
The high stake that is paying and swelling the pocket of Enoidem led to his further extending the crises in Osun to other states in the South West where virtually all the states are at loggerheads with each other for reasons that really don’t worth it but for the wrong legal advice being dished out to the party to rip off the innocent interested billionaires-turned politicians in the region.
How will one explain the position of Enoidem who insisted that the PDP should go ahead and appeal an interlocutory injunction in Osun which he knows the Appeal Court and Supreme Court Rules have forbidden with several authorities using same in so many cases and suddenly now decided to make a U-Turn and obey the same interlocutory injunction in Lagos despite coming from the same Court of Coordinate Jurisdiction like that of The High Court, Ikirun.
I don’t want to go into other details of flagrant disregard to the rule of law across several states by many interested party members in many state chapters simply because they have the backing of the National Legal Adviser of the party who has become a contractor and hirer of legal representatives to all factions who are engaged in legal battles within the party. The reason why the imbroglio in PDP festers is because those at the National headquarters condone indiscipline, how will a well attended state congress be upturned by certain losers and a parallel list of unelected people would be taken to the National headquarters and they also admit same? Do they encourage peace or war?
For the National Legal Adviser to now descend on His Excellency, Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State as if the latter made a mistake by warning him to desist from acts that are inimical to the growth, progress and success of the party through wrong legal advice that he has been doling out to the party is mere face saving attempts but it is unfortunate that Enoidem has continuously exhibited gross inconsistencies in applying different decisions to the same situations depending on who he decides to satisfy. The legal profession all over the world is one of the noble, if not the most noble profession that all nations of the world are looking up to as a role model for their society to get justice but for the practioners of the same respected profession to be twisting the law to satisfy their personal egos is very unfortunate, disappointing and smark indecency especially by leaders of an opposition party. It connotes that the party is not worthy of the trust of the citizens to hand over their destiny to.
For PDP to be credible in the eyes of the nation, people like the National Legal Adviser of PDP should openly be discharged and relieved of his duties for misleading the party in not less that 20 state chapters where litigations are ongoing because the party refuses to abide by simple court injunctions that are as simple as reading the letters of alphabets by nursery school pupils but because there is leadership failure, the right can be turned to wrong and white to black, apology to the Afro-beat Legend, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.
A word is enough for the wise, the National Executive Committee of the party should brace up for the great challenge ahead of it, take a critical look at the activities of the TAX COLLECTORS within the ranks of its NWC especially those at the head of its legal team before they destroy the golden image of the party and bury it in shame because if the activities of Enoidem and others are not checked now, many victories of the party in several coming elections will be reversed through court processes because majority of those that are being illegally forced on the party as executives may have their congresses invalidated and their nominations of candidates discarded on technical legal grounds.
Zamfara state is still fresh in our mind where legal process robbed the APC of its hard earned victory.
Signed.
*Abayomi Ojosegun, Ife North Local Government, Osun State.*
