One SDP faction pledges to appeal the leadership conflict at the Court of Appeal

A disgruntled faction of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) has threatened to fight the Federal High Court of Abuja’s decision to reject its claim to be the party’s legitimate leadership.

On Friday, Olu Falae’s group filed a lawsuit with the Federal High Court in Abuja, but Justice Inyang Edem Ekwo dismissed it because he felt his court had the authority to hear it.

The judge concluded that the SDP’s ongoing leadership issue is an internal party matter that his court cannot intervene in. This turmoil has shook the SDP since 2019.

Chief Supo Shonibare, the aggrieved faction’s leader, told reporters shortly after the judge rejected the case that their attorneys will review the ruling and promptly appeal it to the Court of Appeal. Chief Shonibare had led the group to court and represented them in court.

There is no doubt that this is not the last we’ve heard of it. We are traveling to the Court of Appeal to request its assistance in the case with the intention of obtaining justice,” he stated.

The judge stated that since the Social Democratic Party’s internal affairs were at issue, the court could not get involved in the lawsuit.

According to him, the plaintiffs are party members, and the party has the power to change its constitution. It also has a system in place for resolving internal conflicts.

Justice Ekwo ruled that political parties shouldn’t involve the court in their internal matters.

The subject of the complaint is the party’s internal affairs, so I find that there is no cause of action in this case, he said.

I issue an order dismissing the lawsuit because it lacks merit and declining jurisdiction over the case.

In order to establish Professor Tunde Adeniran’s legitimacy as the SDP’s real leader, the SDP, Chief Supo Shonibare, and 10 other individuals sued Professor Adeniran and 11 other individuals in the Federal High Court of Abuja in 2019.

Nasiru Naaba, Kelvin Damara, Saleh Dass, Cornelius Oreruan, Tunde Onokoya, Abubakar Babaiya, Hassan Adamu, Aniekwe Ikechukwu, Isaac Bello, and Mohammed Ibrahim are additional plaintiffs who asserted affiliation with the national and state executives of the SDP.

There are 12 defendants in total, ranging from Professor Tunde Adeniran through Shehu Gaban, Emeka Atuma, Professor Rufai Alkali, Marian Tolopari, Dr. Junaid Mohammed, Senators Ebenezer Ikeyina and Erin Henshaw, David Umah, Stanley Nnanka, and Joseph Achile, as well as INEC.

Plaintiffs stated in the lawsuit with the filing number FHA/A/ABJ/CS/1358/2019 that they were elected to office for a term of four years on March 9, 2016, during the party’s national convention, and that their term would expire on March 8, 2020.

When Professor Tunde Adeniran and his colleagues took control of the party in 2018, they asserted that their appointment at the party’s national convention in 2018 meant that their tenure had not yet ended.

Insisting that no party officials were elected in 2018, Shonibare asserted that he was the party’s acting national chairman following Chief Olu Falae’s resignation in 2019.

Plaintiffs who based their claim to office on clauses in the party’s 2012 Constitution further noted that neither that document, nor the alleged one adopted by Falae and others, allowed for the selection of NEC members.

They argued that the first through twelfth accused do not truly represent the leadership of the SDP.

The 2nd to 12th plaintiffs, however, lacked locus standi to initiate the lawsuit in the first place, and their names should be struck out of the lawsuit, according to the first, second, fourth, ninth, and eleventh defendants, represented by Peter Nwata.

In its response to the lawsuit, INEC stated that the court lacked jurisdiction since Section 251 of the 1999 Constitution as amended’s provisions had rendered the plaintiffs’ case legally inadmissible and that the plaintiffs’ complaint had become statute-barred.