Factions disagree over Nnamani’s return to PDP

    
Factions of the the Peoples Democratic Party in Enugu State have expressed divergent views over Senator Chimaroke Nnamani’s return to the party.

Senator Nnamani was governor of the state between 1999 and 2007, and represented Enugu East senatorial zone at the Senate between 2007 and 2011.

While the Agbani Ward Chairman in Nkanu West Local Government Area of Enugu State, Mr. Monday Ngene, has continued to insist that the former governor has formally returned to the party, other members of the executive committee in Agbani Ward have spoken to the contrary.

Ngene told The PUNCH, on Sunday, that Nnamani was issued with membership card number 0276943, duly signed by the party’s national chairman, national secretary, national organising secretary, ward chairman and ward secretary.

With documents to back his claims, Ngene said, “His (Nnamani’s) ward number is 3259.”

He said, “Between August 2013 and the second week of January 2014, the party has registered 3291 old and new members of the party in Agbani Ward.”

However, other members of the Agbani PDP executive committee accused Ngene of being economical with the truth.

They stated this in a communiqué issued at the end of its monthly ward meeting.

According to them, “The purported re-admission of Nnamani by Ngene was null and void and of no effect.”

The Agbani PDP executive said Ngene could not have readmitted Nnamani into the party as he (Ngene) was long suspended from the party.

The communiqué dismissed as a sham, an earlier meeting on February 27, 2014, in which Ngene and the former governor, with his supporters, stormed the ward office at Agbani in celebration of the former governor’s return to the party.

The ward executive members maintained that the former governor did not follow the due process, saying, “he did not write to the ward secretary as required by the PDP constitution.”

They, therefore, insisted that Nnamani was still a chieftain of the People for Democratic Change, which he formed after he left PDP in late 2010.

The communique read in parts, “That the suspension of Mr. Monday Ngene as PDP Chairman in Agbani ward was ratified by members of PDP Agbani ward; hence he ceased to function as ward chairman since Friday, February 21, 2014 when the Local Government Executive of PDP, Nkanu West chapter, informed the ward of his suspension, in line with Chapter X, Section 57, sub- Section 3, of the PDP Constitution of 2012 (as amended).

“That the purported meeting and re-admission of Dr. Chimaroke Nnamani into the party in Agbani ward is null and void as due process, as stipulated in the constitution, was not followed. He cannot be re-admitted by an individual that has no authority.”

The ward’s Acting Chairman, Ndubuisi Nnamani and the Ward Secretary, Modechai Ede, said that they never received any formal letter from Nnamani seeking for re-admission.

They said that anytime he followed the due process, he would be treated according to the party’s constitution.

Chairman of the party in Nkanu West council, Mr. Vincent Nnaji, also stated that the former governor was yet to apply for re-admission into the party.

Nnaji explained that anyone who left the party does not just walk back and go to register, but must follow laid down processes and procedures which, he said, includes formal application to ward secretary.

“The former Enugu State governor never followed this simple process, so he has not been re-admitted into the party,” he said

Punch