Disregard My Expulsion, Kashamu Tells INEC, DSS, Police

Femi Ogbonnikan In Abeokuta

The embattled Senator representing Ogun East in the National Assembly, Buruji Kashamu, has formally taken up the issue of his expulsion from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and written a counter petition to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Department of State Services (DSS) and the police to disregard the sanction.

Kashamu, who was reacting to the correspondences of the PDP national leadership to the three agencies, maintained that the party’s sanction against him was a still-birth and cannot stand the test of the law.

The lawmaker’s position was contained in a letter dated August 6 and addressed to the PDP National Chairman, Uche Secondus, which was copied to the INEC Chairman, Resident Electoral Commissioner in-charge of Ogun State, state Commissioner of Police and state Director of DSS, among others.

The senator, in a statement signed and issued yesterday, declared that the PDP’s correspondences to the DSS, INEC and the police were not only borne out of ignorance but most ridiculous, deceitful and criminally contemptuous.

He said it was outside the functions of the National Legal Adviser of PDP to write such correspondences as stipulated in Article 42 of the party’s Constitution.

“It is only the national chairman and the national secretary that have powers to issue such correspondences as stipulated in Articles 35 and 36 of the party’s constitution,” the lawmaker said.

Kashamu added that, there were pending litigations in which the courts had restrained the national leadership of the PDP from taking any disciplinary action against him and others.

“Thus, I respectfully urge you to discountenance the fake letter, as it is not worth more than the piece of paper on which it was written.

“Secondly, the National Working Committee (NWC) could not have validly expelled me and others when there are subsisting judgments and orders of court forbidding them from taking any disciplinary action against me and the others. “If they had thought through their ill-advised step, they would have realised that it offends the provision of Article 57 (6) of the PDP Constitution,” Kashamu said.

The senator added that he had expected men of conscience within the party to act if any “mercantile agent” decided to go against the laws of the land and resorted to self-help in further bringing the party into disrepute.