A faction of the All Progressives Congress in Rivers State, comprising foundation members of the political parties that merged to form the party, has asked an Abuja Federal High Court to stop the party’s interim executive committee in the state from handling the registration of new members.
Mr. Otonye Briggs, the 2011 governorship candidate for the Congress for Progressive Change, one of the parties that merged to form the APC, said he filed the suit for himself and on behalf of the members of the ‘bonafide’ interim state executive committee and other stakeholders of the party in Rivers State.
Briggs, who described himself as the ‘interim state chairman, APC, Rivers State’, also asked the court to restrain Chief Davis Ikanya and Emeka Beke, the interim state chairman and secretary, respectively, who joined the APC following Governor Rotimi Amaechi’s defection to the party, from parading themselves as the executives of the party in the state, pending the election of a substantive executive committee.
He equally asked the court to order the party, its interim national chairman, Chief Bisi Akande, and secretary, Musa Tijani, from recognising Ikanya and Beke as the executives of the APC in Rivers State.
In an affidavit in support of the suit, Briggs claimed that Ikanya and Beke are not members of the APC as they were not part of the legacy parties – CPC, Action Congress of Nigeria and All Nigeria Peoples Party, which merged to form the party.
The plaintiff argued that “by the merger of ACN, ANPP and CPC which gave rise to APC, and by APC constitution, only the erstwhile members of the said legacy parties presently constitute the membership of APC nationwide, particularly in Rivers State.”
Source: Punch
