Sacking PDP chair now is counting chicks before they hatch, group warns
Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) presidential candidate for the 2023 election, Atiku Abubakar, yesterday, pleaded with aspirants who contested against him, as well as party leaders, to unite and work towards victory.
Atiku, who received his certificate of return from the party’s leadership, said while he remained excited and happy to bear PDP’s flag again, stakeholders must “remember that what just happened is a contest within a family to decide how to put our best foot forward. The main contest is the one to win the presidency of our country for our party.”
Stressing it is time to “pull everyone together”, Atiku said: “I have already visited some of those who contested against me as a way to lead in that effort to unify the party, so that we can face our real opponents, defeat them in the elections and begin the process of rescuing and rebuilding this country.”
He added: “The callous and dangerous All Progressives Party’s (APC) misrule over the past seven years is there for everyone to see. However, we should not take their defeat for granted. We must unite and work extremely hard for every single vote in this country. There is so much to do and there is little time to waste. So, let’s get to work.”
In his remarks, while presenting the certificate to Atiku, PDP National Chairman, Iyorchia Ayu, noted that the occasion was not a celebration of victory. In his words: “There were no victors, there were no vanquished. The party won. It is the party that won. Atiku Abubakar is not yet victorious. He has only been produced as our candidate, the candidate of the whole party.”
He appealed: “As we march forward, we need all of you. We want you all to fuse together into one happy political family. It is this family that will face the battle ahead.”
At the ceremony were: Delta State Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, his Akwa Ibom counterpart, Udom Emmanuel, and other party leaders.
Atiku’s co-contestants present included: Bukola Saraki, Mohammed Hayatu-Deen, Tari Oba Oliva and Sam Ohuabunwa.
SOME stakeholders of the party known as Concerned PDP League, however, have demanded the resignations of Ayu, National Secretary Samuel Anyanwu and National Organising Secretary Umar Bature.
The group, also known as ‘PDP watchdog’, accused Ayu and some members of the National Working Committee (NWC) of selling the party’s tickets to the highest bidders and manipulating the delegates’ list used for the presidential convention.
It warned that failure to tender their resignation letters on or before June 20, 2022 will attract protest at the party’s national secretariat.
This came barely 24 hours after elder statesman and leader of Pan-Niger Delta Forum, Chief Edwin Clark, said Ayu is no longer fit to retain his position.
Clark had alleged that Ayu was partial in the processes leading to the “baffling conclusion of the PDP presidential primary”.
Speaking at a press conference in Abuja, the leader of Concerned PDP League, Daboikiabo Warmate, claimed Ayu and his team have been immersed in one scandal or the other, to the detriment of the party, since coming on board six months ago.
Describing the Ayu-led NWC as the darkest chapter in the history of the party, Warmate warned: “With them in the helms of affairs of PDP, the party will most likely lose the 2023 general elections.”
ALSO, a former Deputy National Chairman of the PDP, Chief Olabode George, in a telephone interview with The Guardian, yesterday, called on Ayu to honour his promises that if a northerner emerges as presidential flag bearer, he (Ayu) would resign.
He said: “Ayu’s words must be his bond. He said it, and we are just about a week after the primary. We have a lot of crises in many states now, in terms of the primaries, state Assemblies, governorship and others. He can still spearhead the party, to see how much he can do to calm the nerves of the aggrieved.
“I know Ayu to be a gentleman. He said it right from the very beginning and people would take him at his words for the sake of the party and its sanctity.
“The onus is on Ayu to stand by his words. The party’s hierarchy must meet as quickly as possible to redefine and restructure, so that other members who are feeling aggrieved would not start to say this is what is happening, and then Nigerians would see that what we say we are, we truly are.
“The national chairman, president and chairman of the Board of Trustees of the party cannot (all) come from the north.”
George, however, praised the emergence of Atiku as the party’s flag bearer, saying: “Atiku is not going to learn on the job because he has been the vice president before. I believe he will do everything possible to avoid the mistakes of the past, and being a deft politician, he will address the necessary as he is supposed to.
“He is going there with that box of experience he has learnt. The major challenge before Nigeria, today, is insecurity, and I believe he must have a good answer to it. He cannot do it alone. But being a successful politician, he will succeed.”
BUT a group, Coalition of South East Youth Leaders (COSEYL), berated persons calling for Ayu’s resignation, saying: “It is a very wrong political calculation for anyone to expect PDP to be talking about how to elect a new national chairman when other parties are working hard to win elections next year.”
In a statement by its national president, Goodluck Egwu Ibem, COSEYL said: “Asking Ayu to resign, now, will mean counting one’s chicks before they are hatched.”
He added: “That a candidate wins the presidential primaries of his party and emerges the party’s candidate does not mean a win at the 2023 general elections. We advise that the status quo should remain until after the general election, upon which the outcome of the election will determine the next action of the party.”
