Factional National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Ali Modu Sheriff is angry with Justice Watila Mohammed of the Federal High Court in Port-Harcourt for giving the Makarfi faction of the party a go-ahead to hold a national convention on Wednesday after it had been stopped by another Federal High Court in Abuja.
Modu Sheriff threatened to write a petition against the judge to the National Judicial Council and the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Mahmoud Mohammed over the matter.
The PDP factional chairman, who spoke to news men in Abuja on Tuesday said that he was shocked by the order issued by Justice Watila validated Wednesday’s national convention on the ground that the July 4 2016 which upheld the decision taken at the May 21, 2016 convention was still subsisting.
“We are shocked even with that ruling. All the judges in Nigeria are on annual vacation. We have been in court with all of them for the past one month on an issue that a judge went into in Port Harcourt which started on Friday; people went and filed court cases on Thursday and got an exparte motion, which has been frowned at by the judiciary for now.
“Most stakeholders in the judiciary don’t want exparte motion because it denies justice to others. But let’s accept that the judge decided to do that. The life span of the exparte motion is 14 days, which means you have time to serve the other people to respond.
“On that Thursday, the judge gave exparte motion. The next day he converted that exparte motion to interlocutory order. On Monday, he sat and heard the main case to give a ruling or judgment today at 2pm without allowing us as defendants to defend ourselves.
“This morning, when our lawyers went to court, the judge authorized all the registry staff to run away. It took our lawyer, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria to call everybody in Nigeria that this judiciary should not be destroyed. From 9am till now (4pm), they are receiving our own response to the application. [myad]
