Afoko sues NPP over delegates’ confab
An attempt by suspended National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr Paul Afoko, to stop the extraordinary national delegates’ conference of the NPP from removing him from office as the chairman of the party, hit a snag yesterday when the Human Rights High Court failed to hear an application for an interim injunction.
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The move is to ensure that the party did not take any decision that would be prejudicial to a case he had filed at the court challenging his indefinite suspension by the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party.
The court, presided over by Justice Dennis Adjei, an Appeals Court Judge sitting as an additional high court judge, explained that he would not be around next Monday to sit on the substantive case, since he was taking a break.
He, therefore, told counsel for the applicant that he would transfer the case to another court for hearing by the close of yesterday or today.
Claims
In an affidavit in support of the application, Mr Afoko averred that he was duly elected as the national chairman of the NPP by an overwhelming majority of votes at a national delegates’ conference held in Tamale and that since his election and assumption of power, he had lawfully performed his duties until some members of the party wrote petitions against his conduct and asked for his suspension.
He claimed that the Council of Elders of the party also concluded in their letter that at least he should be suspended from office as the national chairman until after the 2016 general election.
He maintained that the National Council never met on the said issue and on its own motion, the National Disciplinary Committee, in gross display of bias and breach of the rules of natural justice, proceeded to hear the petition and recommended to the NEC that he should be suspended indefinitely.
The NEC, he said, “also purported to accept the recommendations and purported to suspend me indefinitely as National Chairman of the 1st defendant via a letter addressed to me on the October 23, 2015.”
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Extraordinary conference
Mr Afoko claimed that the party had sent notices round by SMS and Whatsapp that it was holding an extraordinary national delegates conference at the St James Seminary, Abesim, Sunyani on Saturday, December 19, 2015.
He said the party was preparing feverishly “to remove me from office as the national chairman by getting delegates invited for the conference to endorse my removal from office during the conference notwithstanding the pendency of my court action”.
He held that in the event that he was removed from office and he eventually won the case, he could not be compensated by damages, especially when his tenure of office was for four years.
“I would suffer irreparable injury if this application is not granted,” he maintained.
Writer’s email: victor.kwawukume@graphic.com.gh