By Folorunso Alagbede, Abuja
Members of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) National Working Committee (NWC), Hon. Ikenga Ugochinyere and other stakeholders of the party on Tuesday disagreed, sharply, over the unending crisis rocking the party.
While the Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the party, Ibrahim Abdullahi blamed the former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar for the crisis in the party, Ugochinyere blamed the Acting National Chairman, Amb. Umar Damagum and the former governor of Rivers state, Nyesom Wike as the problem of the party.
Narrating the ordeal of the PDP in Abuja, Ugochinyere, who is a member of the House of Representatives, noted that lawmakers and other stakeholders are decamping from PDP because the symbol of the party, which is an umbrella is no longer wide enough to cover them.
Ugochinyere said aside Wike, who has taken a job to run an errand for All Progressives Congress (APC), Damagum’s emergence as the acting National Chairman of PDP is causing serious problem for the party.
Speaking at a conference titled “Fix PDP To Fix Nigeria,” Ugochinyere said “we are not yet in that level to even ask ourselves whether we are playing an opposition role. Because we are not yet in opposition.
“We seem to be working for different people and different interests now. But we need to come back and realise that we are opposition and restructure ourselves along that opposition line, the way you have opposition in Senegal, in Ghana, in other parts of West Africa.
“We are not even up to 10% as an opposition political party. And Nigeria used to be the hotbed of African political activism. But suddenly the PDP cannot play that role as opposition.
“So we need to ask ourselves, why are we not playing that role as an opposition political party? Because those things have happened before we came in and it keeps happening.
“So let’s leave what happened in the past or the mistakes some of our founding fathers made. But you will also agree that they laid enough foundation for us.
“The standard we are operating today is painful, embarrassing and insulting. It is nothing near what our founding fathers had, even though they had their own shortfall. I listened to the member of NWC speak passionately about how they inherited the challenges.
“But what I would ask him is, are you proud the way your own NWC is running now? Are you going to, because there are people who created these problems for you, those who are still creating that problem, is that a justification?
Don’t you have your own sense of duty and responsibility to now say, let’s change the way these things are happening? Can’t you just say, I want this to change?
“The NWC is like a judge, not only doing justice, but you must be seen to be doing justice.
“If you look at some of the things that have happened, yes, we lost the election, we lost funding, we started surviving from governors or individual stakeholders and so on and so forth. But the biggest problem your own NWC is facing today, which is also affecting our role as an opposition party.
“We have been so decimated that just a few days, Peter Obi left the level, and is having the same 12 states with us. We should agree that we failed. We completely failed. 12 states.
“If they are the ones that took away from him, in that case he had even the highest number of states in that election. So that should tell us that the new generation is moving away from us.
“When I was coming, I saw Fix PDP to Fix Nigeria. Very fantastic. But before you fix PDP you have to fix everything that is internal. And that starts with the issue of leadership struggle.
‘We can’t wave it aside. And let me tell you, as long as we don’t resolve these issues, the people out there are just laughing at us.
“Like basic constitutional responsibility, Article 45 and 47, a tradition that we have maintained over the years. We find it difficult to speak the truth. What is Damagum still doing? And I ask you here now, as the national chairman of the party, go in by that tradition.
” So let’s leave Wike out of it. Wike has taken a job to run an errand for APC. So we already know where he belongs.
“But then what are we doing? What are we doing as a group to rescue the party? So the point I’m trying to make here is that Articles 47 is very clear that when a vacancy occurs, a party NEC picks another person from that zone or area where the former occupants originated. “And you have become acting chairman by virtue of 45. Call a NEC meeting to appoint an acting chairman. Is that difficult for somebody, who wants Nigeria to take him serious? And that inability to do that is what brought this round of crisis again. And let me say this, you people know what you are doing”, he said.
While blaming Atiku for the problems facing the party, Abdullahi said that the present NWC inherited the problems in the party.
He emphasized that the NWC led by Damagum is not in the pocket of Wike, adding that Atiku should be blamed.
He said Atiku succeeded in foisted a worse government on the nation in the person of Muhammadu Buhari, adding, “we inherited the problems we are facing today. We are not in the pocket of Wike. Atiku Abubakar succeed in foisted the worse government in the person Buhari on us.”
Narrating how the former Vice President caused the problems in the party, Abdullahi said “Atiku came, leaving that party with all the effort many other people have done And then he surfaced again and got the ticket.
“We all rallied behind this same Atiku and we went to that election. There’s no way at the eve of that election five governors would be threatening this party and Atiku Abubakr would play that kind of levity and carelessness to say that they can go to hell.
“Aided by an Ayu, who was clearly working for something different from what we are, the problem that this present NWC is contended with Is a problem we inherited.
“We saw it clearly and some of us came all out and said to Atiku, you are losing it, as if we have not learned any lesson from the 2014 convention where five governors walked out of a convention. With five governors walking out of a convention and we say they can go to hell. Ayu did all that he needed to do to ensure that that was sabotaged as an insider”, the Deputy National Publicity Secretary said.
Other people who spoke at the conference were; Tanimu Turaki, Senator Sanusi Daggash, Osaro Onaiwu and others.
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