By Camillus Eboh
Abuja - Nigeria's ruling party and a breakaway faction are suing each other as a power struggle ahead of next year's elections intensifies, the two sides said on Wednesday.
The legal actions come days after armed police sealed off the new headquarters of the breakaway faction of the People's Democratic Party (PDP), which is tearing itself apart over who will succeed President Olusegun Obasanjo next year.
"We have asked the court to restrain (the new faction) from using the name of the party," PDP spokesperson John Odey said.
But the rival faction, which includes the PDP's first chairman and other influential politicians, filed its own court papers seeking damages from PDP leaders whom it accuses of instigating the police invasion of the new group's premises.
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The breakaway faction also wrote a letter, on official PDP stationery, to the electoral commission arguing that it was the true PDP because the established leaders of the party were appointed, not elected according to party rules.
The break-up of the PDP at the national level mirrors developments in many of Nigeria's 36 states, where parallel party structures have cohabited for several months.
The party has gradually fallen apart over the past year because of a campaign to rewrite the constitution to allow Obasanjo to stand for a third term in 2007.
The top jobs in the party were handed to Obasanjo loyalists who tried to use the PDP to drum up support for the third term, while supporters of Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who wants to succeed Obasanjo, were sidelined.
But the Senate defeated the third term campaign in May and contenders for next year's PDP presidential ticket are engaged in a fierce struggle to dominate the party now that Obasanjo is out of the race.
Obasanjo, a former army ruler, returned to power as a civilian in a 1999 transition to democracy after three decades of almost uninterrupted military dictatorship.
Next year's elections should mark the first time an elected president hands over to another since independence from Britain in 1960.
In Nigeria's ideology-free politics, vote rigging is widespread and fleeting allegiances are motivated mainly by money, individual self-interest and ethnicity.
The other two leading political parties in Africa's top oil producer are also factionalised.
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