Sheriff moves to open parallel secretariat as peacemakers meet over PDP crisis

Indications emerged yesterday that factional acting National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Ali Modu Sheriff, has concluded plans to open a parallel office ahead of today’s meeting by concerned peacemakers in Abuja to find a lasting solution to the impasse currently tearing the main opposition party in the country apart.

But his rival and Chairman of the Caretaker Committee, Ahmed Makarfi, is unperturbed by the development because, according to him, his group “has many places to operate from.”

The Inspector-General of Police, Solomon Arase and the Director General of the Department of State Security (DSS) Lawal Daura, had last week waded into the crisis following the violence that rocked supporters of the two contending factions at the party secretariat in Abuja.

The new move by Sheriff is coming even as it was confirmed yesterday that he wrote a petition to the security agencies that his life was under threat, alleging that the thugs, who stormed the party’s national secretariat last week, were actually there for him.

He suggested they may have come to terminate his life.