BY EMMANUEL AZIKEN, Political Editor
The sensational appearance and disappearance of the National Chairman of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP, Dr. Okwesileze Nwodo, at the party’s national convention, on Thursday night, may have been a climax to the politics of extremism and ego flowing from his native Enugu State.

PDP Acting Chairman, Alhaji Haliru Bello declaring President Goodluck Jonathan and Vice President Namadi Sambo winner of the Party's 2011 presidential primaries ....Photos: State House.

Nwodo’s appearance and the subtle elbow that pushed him away from the podium may also have been a product of an interlocking politics that may well have put the legal knot against the party’s prospects in the forthcoming presidential election.

On the eve of the convention, last Wednesday, an Enugu High Court, presided over by Justice Reuben Onuorah, had granted an interim injunction restraining Nwodo as a member and an officer of PDP.

The order followed an exparte motion brought by one Mr. Collins Amalu upon the grounds  that Nwodo was not a card-carrying member of the party.

The motion followed a reported interview with a national newspaper published on November 13, 2010 where Nwodo allegedly claimed that he had not been registered as a member of PDP after his earlier exit some time before the 2007 elections.

The court judgment coming on the eve of the national convention was an unprecedented spoiler to what party officials were dreaming to be a perfectly organised election.

Party sources told Sunday Vanguard that once the party got wind of the judgment, major stakeholders, including members of the convention committee, agreed that immediate solution should be found to the problem.

Party chieftains were equally careful to note that the constitutionally bound time limit for presentation of democratically-nominated candidates, which was Wednesday, could not be trampled upon. In effect, the party did not want to take the risk of allowing the convention to be pronounced as an illegal gathering. This was despite the fact that the party, as it was claimed, had not been served the Nwodo restraining order.

Indeed, all through Wednesday, Nwodo, reportedly, did not make himself available to be served by the court bailiff who was himself sprinted from Enugu to serve the judgment.

The court order was an eerie twist to the war of attrition between the Nwodos and a faction of the party in  Enugu State opposed to his continued leadership of the party.

At the heart of the division of the battle is reportedly the control of the state chapter of the party.
Remarkably, the bewildering court judgment came after a  last-minute truce was found which allowed  Nwodo and Governor Sullivan  Chime to share the nominations of the party in the state.

That agreement itself revealed the seeming hypocrisy in both camps which had, all the while, accused each other of high-handedness in the sharing of offices and positions.

Following newspaper publications of the court judgment, Nwodo, it was learnt, was requested by party stakeholders to temporarily transfer the leadership of the party executive to his immediate subordinate, Dr. Haliru Mohammed, the deputy national chairman of the party.

It was based on this that, as the convention opened on Thursday evening, Mohammed proceeded to declare the convention open. He had barely finished with his introduction when Nwodo sprang to claim his fort.

A shocked Mohammed was reported to have expressed surprise as Nwodo reportedly claimed to those around that the court order had been reversed. Those around the podium said he, however, failed to produce any order to that effect.

As he took the podium, party chieftains, however, deliberated on the implication with several of them expressing concern. Meetings were held below the platform and it was resolved that Nwodo’s action should be reversed in order not to bring judicial opprobrium to the party and its prospects in the forthcoming elections.

Following his speech, two of the party’s aspirants, Mrs. Sarah Jibril and Atiku Abubakar, came forward to present their speeches.
Mrs. Jibril’s speech was a play on the emotion while Atiku’s was a combative speech that many delegates say afterwards repulsed them.

It was an attack on the personality of President Goodluck Jonathan who he called incompetent and who he said could not be trusted.
It was a literal hurling of insults on the chief executive of the country that not just unsettled the president but also put off many delegates.

Following Atiku’s speech and the confusion and anger it obviously generated in Jonathan who was obviously unsettled by the seeming provocation, the convention was delayed by some unplanned for interludes. It was during this time that party officials strategised on how to handle the Nwodo question. While many thought that the interlude was to allow the president recover from the Atiku speech, Sunday Vanguard gathered that the interlude was deliberately conceived by party elders including Chief Anthony Anenih to respond to Nwodo.

It was upon this that the party’s National Legal Adviser, Chief  Olusola Oke, proceeded to explain to delegates the legal implications of what was about to happen.

Mohammed, as such, again, proceeded to the stage and explained how Nwodo had earlier that Thursday handed him a letter as acting national chairman as a consequence of the Enugu High Court order.

Excerpts of the letter from Nwodo to Mohammed ran thus:

“An Enugu High Court restraining me from presiding over today’s function, I wish to humbly delegate the responsibility to you. I wish you the best of luck in this task.”

The deputy national chairman then said: “I therefore as acting chairman of our great party and as chairman of this convention I will read my address and declare this convention open to make all our actions legitimate.”
Thereafter, nothing again was heard from Nwodo.

Following the convention, political chieftains were at pains to explain the import of the action by the party’s substantive national chairman.

Besides his mortal political foe in the person of  Chime, Nwodo would now be at pains to explain to the Presidency and other members of the party hierarchy the reasons for his action last Thursday.

Repeated efforts to get the response from his office through phone calls were unsuccessful.