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Sango accuses third force of sponsoring crisis in PDP

By Isa Abdulsalami Ahovi, Jos
29 April 2019   |   3:12 am
As the crisis rocking the Plateau State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) deepens, the suspended embattled chairman, Damishi Sango, has said the action of the 16 members of the State Campaign Council that suspended him was being sponsored by an unnamed third force in the state. While addressing the media recently at the state party’s secretariat,…

Damishi Sango

As the crisis rocking the Plateau State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) deepens, the suspended embattled chairman, Damishi Sango, has said the action of the 16 members of the State Campaign Council that suspended him was being sponsored by an unnamed third force in the state.

While addressing the media recently at the state party’s secretariat, flanked by party officials including the gubernatorial candidate, Senator Jeremiah Useni, he said the involvement of the faceless third force was to cripple the promising petitions they instituted at the elections tribunal. Sango stated emphatically that the illegal action of suspending him and his deputy, Amos Gombi Goyol, would fail woefully.

He used the occasion to respond to each of the allegations leveled against him by the splinter group that suspended him from office.

According to him, “The State Executive Council (SEC) which set up the campaign council is made up of over 72 members. And the 16 who signed the illegal suspension order cannot therefore form a quorum to dissolve the council. So, this is another illegality.”

Sango further told journalists that they woke up that fateful Wednesday morning to the rude and toxic news that 16 members of the state executive of PDP had passed a vote of no confidence on the party’s chairman and the deputy chairman.

He argued that their claim for taking the action to save the party did not hold water because they saw their action as an attempt to divide the party and cause disaffection and confusion. The chairman said the purported suspension was already a nullity, adding that since the group raised complaints in their petition, they replied to them with a sense of modesty.

Sango said all the money that were allegedly misappropriated could not be given and handled by one person, adding that there was nothing that was shrouded in secrecy.

After Sango, chairman of the party in Kanke Local Government Area of the state who represented the other 16 PDP chairmen, Mr. Dauda Waptu, pledged his loyalty to the party, adding that the suspension was done without following the constitution of the party, saying that Sango and Gombi still remained their chairman and deputy chairman respectively.

Also, Useni said the decision of the group to suspend both the chairman and his deputy was laughable. He said to remove a councilor in a local government has its own procedure, adding that a whole chairman of a party in the state could not be removed like that. Useni said he was at the tribunal to reclaim his governorship mandate and that by the grace of God, that would happen where he wioud carry everybody along, whether they voted for him or not.

He used the opportunity to appeal to the other warring group to calm down, adding that if they submitted their complaints properly by following laid-down procedures, they would be looked into accordingly.

During question and answer session, Sango told journalists that the national secretariat is already aware of the political imbroglio in the state, adding that only National Executive Committee (NEC) could sanction the party chairman of a state.

He said what the group should have done was to write and complain to the national secretariat, which would now investigate and if found culpable, then he would then be sanctioned.

“But they brought the complaints, they took the decision, they sanctioned me and one of them was appointed to take over the office,” he said. “This is not done even in the animal kingdom.”

Sango expressed surprise that he was betrayed by people he considered close to him in the party.

“I am not aware that I have been suspended, I have not seen any letter to that effect. I am surprised that I was betrayed by people I consider close to me in the party. There was a State Campaign Council which the Governorship candidate, Sen. Jeremiah Useni was part of. All money was disbursed by the campaign council.”

Also reacting to what he termed as purported suspension, a gubernatorial aspirant of the party who was defeated at the primaries and one time Special Adviser on Political Affairs to former Governor Jonah Jang, Honourable Alexander Molwus, described the suspension as a farce.

According to Molwus, the suspension could not stand because supporters who matter as stakeholders were not consulted before taking the unilateral decision to suspend the chairman and his deputy.

According to him, “Yesterday, we had a discussion with Honourable Damishi Sango and there was no reference to what happened today. However, there are rules to be followed before a decision to suspend or remove a chairman of the party. His removal is not a tea party thing that can be taken without following the due process.”

He argued that it might not be in the overall interest of the party to start inter-party crisis, especially when the party’s gubernatorial candidate, Senator Jeremiah Useni, is at the tribunal challenging the victory of the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate and the incumbent Governor Simon Lalong.

Molwus, who is a PDP stalwart, reasoned that whatever the grievances are should have been put on hold till after the tribunal.

According to the constitution of the party, Molwus argued, the State Working Committee (SWC) has no right to suspend the chairman and his deputy, adding that the chairman of the party is a member of the National Executive Committee (NEC) who cannot be suspended by SWC. The two purportedly suspended officials, he argued, could not be removed from office at the same time, adding that in case the chairman was removed, his deputy would always remain to perform the functions of the chairman.

“This is a democratic coup where people sit and wish some officials be removed without following any legal processes,” he said. “Their action is not mature enough. If the SWC has grievances with the chairman, the best thing to do is to resign. But the allegation has to do with money, money, money.”

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