Ohanaeze election: Okwukwu drags Nwodo to court

From Jude Chinedu, Enugu

With days to go to the national election of Ohaneaze Ndigbo, the embattled Secretary-General of the body, Chief Uche Okwukwu, has dragged its President-General, Chief Nnia Nwodo, to court, seeking to stop him from conducting the exercise.

Okwukwu, who has been at loggerheads with Nwodo, leading recently to the inauguration of a parallel Ohanaeze Election Committee, listed Nwodo as the sole defendant in the suit in his capacity as the President-General of the body.

He is claiming that the Imeobi meeting of Ohanaeze where the Nwodo leadership inaugurated an election committee was null and void, saying they had no powers to summon such a meeting.

The Secretary-General has now approached the court insisting that the committee he set up remains the only body legally empowered to go ahead with the election.

Apart from praying the court to stop Nwodo’s committee from going ahead with the election, he is also seeking the sum of N50,000,000 as general damages.

In a court process filed before an Umuahia high court and made available to reporters in Enugu, Okwukwu is seeking an order of court ‘setting aside any decision taken by the Defendant and the members of Ohanaeze Ndigbo at the Ime Obi meeting on 20th day of December 2020, as being nugatory, null and void and of no effect whatsoever, same having not been summoned by the plaintiff in accordance with the provisions of Article 11 of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo Constitution.’

Okwukwu is seeking ‘an order of court validating the Ime Obi meeting of 31st day of December, 2020 in Owerri and properly summoned by the plaintiff in accordance with the Constitution and all the decisions reached therein as valid, authentic and subsisting.

‘An order setting aside the purported Electoral Committe set up by the defendant without due process. An order of the honourable court validating the Electoral Committee headed by Prince Richard Ozobu as the authentic one.

‘An order of perpetual injunction restraining the defendant, his agents, privies and servants from summoning any meeting of the National Executive Committee, NEC, Imeobi and National General Assembly or any other meetings at all without the knowledge of the plaintiff pending the hearing and determination of this substantive suit.’