Ogun State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has suspended Otunba Jimi Lawal for participating in an alleged illegal primary conducted yesterday by persons it described as “dissident members of the party”.
The party also suspended four others. They are the Financial Secretary, Bola Odunmosu; Ijebu North Local Government Chairman of the PDP, Tope Ashiru; Kola Akinyemi and Bashiru Ajadi.
The affected persons were suspended from further participating in any of the party’s activities for a month, following alleged overt and covert roles they played in the alleged illegal congress.
The decision to suspend them was reached at the end of the State Working Committee (SWC) meeting of the PDP held yesterday, which was chaired by the Acting State Chairman, Chief Taiwo Akinlabi.
Lawal was one of the governorship aspirants, who contested for the PDP’s governorship ticket, which Ladi Adebutu won. But when Lawal’s camp challenged it at a Federal High Court sitting in Abeokuta, the presiding judge, Justice O. O. Oguntoyinbo, gave an order nullifying the primary and ordered a fresh one within two weeks.
Apparently trying to carry out the order of the court order, the suspended chieftains held a primary somewhere in the state, allegedly without authorisation by relevant organs of the PDP.
The State Secretary, Sunday Solarin, who announced the suspension at the PDP state secretariat, Abeokuta, said Lawal and four others would face the Disciplinary Committee to determine their innocence or guilt.
Lawal has dismissed his purported suspension by the SWC as nothing but the weeping of a beaten and battered premature adult.
Lawal, reacting to the suspension through Austin Oniyokor, the project director, Jimi Adebisi Lawal Campaign Organisation, said what the SWC did was a case of the voice of Jacob but the hand of Esau.