The members of Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) have disclosed their intention to challenge in court the alleged hijack of the party by a six man national executive committee led by Alhaji Falilu Bello.
The Youth leader of the party, Lawan Musa, who spoke to newsmen in Abuja, said trouble started in the party when the former INEC chairman, Prof Attahiru Jega joined the party.
He said the former national chairman, Alhaji Balarabe Musa, organised a national delegate conference which constituted a 49-member national executive committee with himself as the chairman of Board of Trustees.
The source disclosed that Bello sidelined the constitutionally elected 49-member national executive committee and set up a 6-man committee which now runs the party.
He also accused the Alhaji Bello for changing the membership card approved by the party’s national convention.
The youth leader, who acknowledged the existence of crisis in the party said, “Balarabe Musa had been the national chairman of the PRP for a long time. Now because of old age, he decided to resign and went into the PRP constitution which stipulates that a delegate conference should hold to elect the leaders of the party which we did.
“So the leaders elected were 49 people but in the end the chairman and others numbering only six took over the leadership in the party without consulting the elected 49 leaders.
“Therefore, now we are rejecting them as leaders of the PRP. We don’t want them to be the leaders of the party because they violated what was agreed at the delegate conference.”
He disclosed that the bone of contention was the recent entry into the party of Prof Attahiru Jega who was said to have been brought by the Bello committee.
Musa also stated that the Bello committee made up of mainly new members appointed Jega as chairman of the party’s national registration committee against the Constitution of the party which reserves the position for a long standing member.
He disclosed that the old members led by Balarabe Musa had kicked against Jega’s appointment as a chairman of registration committee citing that the party’s constitution had reserved the position for long standing members.
According to him, the group also disapproves the appointment because, according to them, the former INEC boss had in 2015 spearheaded de-registration of the party when he held sway as the INEC chairman.
He argued that Jega reserves the right to join the party but the position he now occupies in the party is exclusively for those who have stayed long in the party.
“What Jega did to the PRP was very terrible because he was the one who singlehandedly deregistered the PRP. The law he applied in de-registering PRP, he said was failure to win an election.
“I was the one who took him to court and filed the case and the judge gave the judgement in favour of the PRP. The judge said a party can survive without necessarily having intention for contesting for an election. Therefore, the law that Jega applied to deregister the PRP does not apply.
“As a member of the party, we are not rejecting him, however we are rejecting him as somebody who will hold responsibility.”
