Ondo 2020: PDP Chieftain Asks Court to Disqualify Deputy Governor
Mr Agboola Ajayi
- Panel recommends rejection of doctored delegates list
James Sowole in Akure
A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ondo State, Mr. Konstante Olopele has asked an Ondo State High Court sitting in Akure to disqualify the Deputy Governor, Mr. Agboola Ajayi from participating in the party primary election scheduled to hold on July 22 over alleged age falsification and perjury.
Based on the report of a three-man probe panel headed by a former Gombe State Governor, Alhaji Ibrahim Dankwambo, the PDP National Working Committee (NWC) has dropped the doctored delegates’ list that stoked undue apprehension in the ranks of the state chapter.
In Suit No: AK/45M/2020 filed by AMAC Solicitors on Friday, Olopele, who sued for and behalf of other concerned members, averred that the deputy governor had breached the code of conduct for public officers.
The plaintiff, therefore, asked the court to disqualify him from holding any public office for a period of ten years for alleged breach of Section 1, 5th Schedule, Part 1 of the Code of Conduct for Public Officers.
Olopele, also a legal practitioner, claimed that Ajayi breached Section 9 of the constitution of Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended).
He, further, claimed that Ajayi had breached the extant laws that are regulating WAEC and Nigerian Law School attendance while he was serving as elected Local Government Chairman and member of the Federal House of Representatives respectively. The court will hear the suit on Tuesday.
On delegates list, a NWC member revealed that the party leadership rejected the doctored list due to the recommendations of a three-man probe panel headed by Ibrahim Dankwambo.
Up until last week, the party had been embroiled in internal crisis, over an allegation that 104 names were substituted in the delegates’ list, and replaced with proxies of the state’s deputy governor, who recently defected to the PDP from the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Though Ajayi denied involvement in the scam, the party, last week, dispatched the Dankwambo panel to Akure, the state’s capital, to solve the riddle.
The NWC member, who spoke on the doctored delegates list in confidence, said the Dankwambo panel, after having painstakingly read through the old delegates list and the newly presented one, spotted the 104 illegal names and knocked them off.
He said: “Following this, it returned to Abuja with the original list to be used for Wednesday’s primary, and also made far-reaching recommendations to the NWC.”
One of the recommendations, according to him, is that the old delegates’ list be adopted for Wednesday’s primary election.
The panel, he added, also appealed that Ajayi, the man in the eye of the storm in the list-doctoring saga, should be forgiven and assimilated fully into the party, despite that he is a newcomer.
Another party source, however, told THISDAY yesterday that the deputy governor, only submitted his secondary school certificate to the party, as his only qualification in the run-up to the PDP primary election.
