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Fayose urges support to rebuild PDP, visits Gbenga Daniel

By Muyiwa Adeyemi (Ado-Ekiti) and Seye Olumide (Lagos)
24 January 2017   |   4:30 am
The Chairman, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Governors’ Forum, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, has called for support for all-inclusive efforts to rebuild the party.

Babatope cautions against relying on Obasanjo

The Chairman, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Governors’ Forum, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, has called for support for all-inclusive efforts to rebuild the party.

The Ekiti State governor described the PDP as “a sleeping, and not a dead lion.”

Fayose made this call when he visited a former governor of Ogun State, Otunba Gbenga Daniel, in his Lagos residence at the weekend.

According to a statement issued by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, the governor, who promised to work with all PDP leaders nationwide to make a success of his tenure, said that the party could still boast of the best and established structure across the country, which needs only reactivation by putting all hands on deck.

Daniel, who likened Fayose to the biblical Daniel, who believed in the rebuilding of the Macedonian wall, called for support for him to achieve his good intentions for the PDP. He described him (Fayose) as “as a fearless, focused and courageous man, and a timely interventionist with a realisable mission.”

Meanwhile, a former Minister of Transportation, Chief Ebenezer Babatope, has said the PDP would be fooling itself to think that erstwhile President Olusegun Obasanjo has anything special with which to revive the ailing party.

Speaking with journalists yesterday to mark his 74th birthday anniversary scheduled for Thursday, the PDP’s Board of Trustees (BoT) member warned against clandestine move to conspire against the interest of the South-West within the party in respect to the national chairmanship position.

He said the fact is that the PDP is terribly ailing, sick, prostrated by greed hobbled by selfishness, stricken by the absence of equity and maimed by the dark conspiracies of little men who want to play God.

According to him: “The PDP lost the last election in 2015 because the highest hierarchy of our party was hijacked and swindled by fly-by-night mercenaries who virtually shoved aside men and women of character and impeccable merit and moral distinction who in more enlightened times could have helped us secure a deserved victory.

“We know that those who were bent on destroying the PDP are back at their old game. We understand they are even concocting a new scenario by merely zoning the national chairmanship position to the South without the traditional specificity of the particular place in the South.

“This is not acceptable to us. This is blatant treachery and a dubious attempt to rob the South-West of our just deserve. We will not take this lying low. Out of the entire six geographical zones, the South-West is the only zone that has never occupied the position of the national chairman. The closest we got to it was when Chief Olabode George was elected deputy national chairman of the party.”

On the recent visit to Obasanjo by immediate past president, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, the former minister said it would be a gross miscalculation for anybody to think that the meeting would have any positive impact on the party.

“Obasanjo is a survivalist and a fighter. Dr. Jonathan must be careful,” he said.

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