THE Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ekiti State has kicked against the suspension of the 16 local government chairmen of the state, saying the action was illegal and will be resisted by the party and the people of the state.
Chairman of the PDP in Ekiti State, Chief Gboyega Oguntuwase, who addressed newsmen, on Wednesday, on the suspension of the chairmen, said the action was “illegal and condemnable.”
The Ekiti State House of Assembly had announced the suspension of the 16 local government chairmen, on Tuesday, claiming that they had been enmeshed in improper financial dealings in the council.
The Assembly had also suspended all the legislative arms of the 16 local governments as well as the appointed officials of the councils, for the same reasons.
Oguntuwase, who addressed newsmen at the party’s secretariat on Wednesday, said “before you can try any council chairman, you must come with audited documents. They have not done that; they have even not called upon the council chairmen to speak to the documents.
“They had said in the legislature that they would carry out a roving tour of all local councils so that they would be able to examine what’s on the ground to determine the truthfulness of the report in those papers. They have not done that.
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“They now carried out a coup against the nearest unit of government to the people of Ekiti. This suspension is unacceptable. This suspension shall be resisted. This suspension is an affront to democracy. This suspension is condemnable in all civilised quarters. We surely are going to resist it and we are telling them that their plot to pour fire upon the entire South West shall not come to pass.”
He claimed that the suspension of the chairmen was a plot by the All Progressives Congress (APC) to weaken the PDP in the state as general election approached.
Oguntuwase said: “The APC is carrying out the assault on the local government chairmen because they know that they are our foot soldiers for the coming election.
“Removing them before their time would amount to weakening the democratic powers of PDP. If they weaken us, it means they want to silence the generality of Ekiti people and Ekiti people will not take it easy with them.
“We have told them we are not going to aid or abet any corruption. They are free to ask questions on the finances of the local councils, but you cannot examine papers that are unaudited. A man cannot be punished without being heard.”
He said the party would go to court if the action was not reversed and stated that they were “praying that the entire South West shall remain in peace and the whole Nigeria shall remain in peace. But justice must be done; democracy must be served. Belonging to a party aside from the APC should henceforth not be seen as a crime.”
Speaking on the members of the PDP in the Assembly, who were part of the decision to suspend the elected local government officials, the Ekiti PDP chairman said “we shall summon members of the PDP in the house and we shall ask them the roles they played in this criminality and in this illegality. If any man merely clothes himself with the garment of PDP but is destroying the soul of PDP, then the party knows the appropriate steps to take.”
On what the party would do in reaction to the development, he said “when a man wants to set his own parents’ house on fire, it’s to alert the whole neighbourhood of the danger that is coming. We are equally alerting the international community; the EU, the USA, the UK that the APC is interested and may likely commit state violence. State violence has started with this erosion of constitutional rights.”
He said: “We are saying that here in Ekiti, we shall resist it. Even when they have antecedents of wanting to cause violence, we will follow the constitutional means to resist their illegalities.”
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