Laide Raheem, Abeokuta
The senator representing Ogun East in the National Assembly, Buruji Kashamu, has formally written to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the Department of State Services (DSS) and the Police, to disregard his expulsion from the party by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
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 “stillbirth 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, the Resident Electoral Commissioner in Ogun State, Commissioner of Police and State Director of DSS, among others.
PDP’s National Legal Adviser, Emmanuel Enoidem had, on August 1, notified INEC and security agencies of the party’s decision to expel Kashamu and three others, including Adebayo Dayo, Semiu Sodipo and Segun Seriki, over alleged infraction of the party’s Constitution.
But the senator, on Monday, declared that the correspondences “were not only borne out of ignorance but most ridiculous, deceitful and criminally contemptuous”.
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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.
According to him, 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.
Kashamu added that there were pending litigations in which the courts had restrained the PDP from taking any disciplinary action against him and others.
The letter said, “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 Executive Committee (NEC) 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 realized that it offends the provision of Article 57 (6) of the PDP Constitution.”
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The senator stated that he 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.
“For the avoidance of doubt, I and the others remain valid, card-carrying and financial members of the PDP. Nobody can take away our rights and privileges because the courts had forbidden the party from doing so before it purportedly moved against us.
“We will continue to operate within the law as PDP members, senator and State Exco members”, Kashamu submitted in the letter.