BREAKING: ‘Illegal convention cannot expel me’, Says Imo PDP chair
Embattled Imo State PDP Chairman, Hon. Austine Nwachukwu, has pushed back forcefully against his purported expulsion from the party, insisting that the event that allegedly removed him never legally existed and therefore had no authority to take action against him.
He argued that two valid Federal High Court judgements had stopped the PDP from holding any national convention until unresolved state congresses were completed, making the entire exercise fundamentally unlawful.
Speaking in an exclusive telephone interview with Sunday Vanguard, Nwachukwu, a frontline figure in the Nyesom Wike-aligned faction of the PDP, expressed disbelief that journalists would take the convention seriously despite being fully aware of the court rulings restraining the party.
He asked pointedly: “You, as a journalist, are you not aware that there have been several court judgements that say they should not do conventions?”
To him, the attempt to remove him was both hollow and laughable because the body that supposedly expelled him, in his view, had no legal recognition.
“Can a non-existent body expel a lawful body? It’s not possible. You people know the truth. You publish only the truth, don’t you?” he queried, urging reporters to rely on verifiable facts.
Nwachukwu repeatedly returned to the point that the PDP had not complied with the judicial directives that required the party to fix its state structures before any national gathering could be convened.
“Two Federal High Court judgements say don’t do convention. Don’t do convention. Go and repair your house. Do all the congresses in all the states that have not done. Then you can do convention,” he explained.
He described the event he was said to have been expelled from as nothing more than a hired crowd assembled for spectacle, not a legitimate political process.
“Quote me. That thing is a jamboree. It’s the people that went to do owambe. That’s the owambe convention. It’s not even a convention. It’s an owambe party. There’s no convention in it,” he declared.
When asked whether he intended to challenge the purported expulsion in court, Nwachukwu dismissed the idea entirely, insisting that there was no basis to dignify an unlawful action with legal attention.
“I will be stupid to start telling you I will go and challenge them in court when I know that the two Federal High Court judgements say don’t do convention,” he said.
He also faulted the organisers for relying on a state high court exparte order to justify an action already barred by a federal high courts.
“A State High Court does not have power to query a Federal High Court. It’s only the Appeal Courts that can do that,” he emphasised.
Throughout the conversation, his frustration with the opposing faction remained palpable, as he accused them of knowingly flouting the law and internal party procedures.
For Nwachukwu, the matter is simple: he remains aligned with the law, and he will not acknowledge decisions issued by what he views as an unlawful assembly.
Source: VANGUARD
