Photos: Ali Modu Sheriff takes over PDP secretariat in Abuja

Days after the Court of Appeal in Port Harcourt validated his position as the authentic National Chairman of PDP, Ali Modu Sheriff has taken over the National secretariat of the party. Sheriff and members of his working committee took over the secretariat last night.

However in a swift reaction to this development, the Ahmed Makarfi-led caretaker committee of the party, released a statement describing as unlawful the taking over of the party's national secretariat by Sheriff and his team. The statement reads...

Senator Ali Modu Sheriff should be held responsible for any lose of party document and property. We say this because the keys to the secretariat is with the Board of Trustees (BoT) and we’ve checked with them, and can confirm that the keys were not handed over to Sheriff or any of his followers.

3. The implication of this is that, Senator Sheriff broke into the National Secretariat which is a criminal offence. We also expected that Modu-Sheriff should have waited for the conclusion of the Appeal we filed at the Supreme Court before he forced himself in just like we held on when we got the FHC Court judgment favouring us last year.

4. We condemn his action in totality and we view it as an affront on the rule of law. Given his act of illegality, we wish to state clearly that he should be held responsible for any loss of documents or damage to the property within the Party Secretariat.

5. The administrative staff as accounting officers were not around to see the event happen, and as the custodians of the property of the party, they refused to participate in the illegal entry made by Ali Modu-Sheriff.

6. His action is provocative and is capable of causing another round of crisis in the party. We advise him in his own interest, to vacate the secretariat immediately.

7. Finally, we also call on authority of the Nigerian Police to prevent chaos by flushing Ali Modu-Sheriff and his team out of the PDP secretariat and let all parties wait for the judgment of the Supreme Court which is the highest court in the land.