War, war in PDP despite peace efforts
The unprecedented turnout of more than 90 per cent of the people that matter in the Peoples Democracy Party (PDP) at the Yar’adua Centre in Abuja on Thursday, climaxed the endless effort to rebuild the party. But the meeting was somehow stalemated.
To the chagrin of all, the embattled national chairman of the party, Senator Ali Modu Sheriff, walked out on the party members in an apparent protest. His action was seen by those who are not on the same page with him as “a good riddance of a stooge.”
The issue at stake was the Port Harcourt Appeal Court judgement of February 17, 2017, which affirmed Sheriff as the national chairman of the party, contrary to the May 2016 national convention that sacked the party’s National Working Committee (NWC), and in its place, appointed a caretaker committee headed by Senator Ahmad Makarfi.
Although the Port Harcourt Appeal Court recognised Sheriff, the PDP Governors’ Forum, a section of the Board of Trustees and other leaders faulted the judgement and affirmed their support for Makarfi.
It was with a view to resolving this logjam that former President Goodluck Jonathan, who had been very quiet politically, decided to wade in. After a series of meetings with forces from each divide, he decided to call the enlarged meeting at the Yar’adua Centre.
Pundits believe that the events that unfolded at the peace meeting ended up marking a “parting point” between Sheriff on one side and the larger PDP family on the other.
Nobody thought that Sheriff would walk out on Jonathan, considering their relationship. More so, there were many PDP stalwarts at the meeting who should ordinarily have the listening ear of the former Borno governor.
While some analysts believe that this may be the end of Sheriff ’s surgeon in the PDP, considering the array of “enemies” he will now confront from different fronts, others believe that the Borno politician would fight to finish.
On his way out of the meeting, Sheriff said he was not happy that the court judgement that recognised him as chairman was surreptitiously disrespected.
But within the forces fighting him, there is the impression that the former Borno governor is just acting the script of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). However, this claim may be far from the truth, considering the fact that he was railroaded to becoming PDP chairman by nearly all the governors on the platform of the party, who are now up in arms against him, with the exception of Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State.
Within his camp, there was a bit of apprehension when the national secretary of his faction, Prof. Wale Oladipo and few others remained at the venue of the meeting for a long time before they left. Their action sparked the suspicion that they had either abandoned Sheriff and joined the bigger wagon of Jonathan and others or they simply remained part of the meeting in order to get the picture of what would happen so as to prepare for another rough struggle.
Most importantly, Governor Dickson was absent, an indication that he was either equally not comfortable with the agenda of the meeting or wanted to watch from a distance.
Sheriff ’s second grouse, besides wanting party faithful to respect the Appeal Court judgement, was that the recommendation of the Dickson committee must be sacrosanct and respected by all.
Dickson was the chairman of the PDP Reconciliation Committee, and had in his report, suggested a political solution to the protracted crisis in the party.
In the recommendations signed by Governor Dickson, the deputy chairman of the committee, Ibrahim Mantu, and secretary, Joshua Lidani, they endorsed the resolution of the meeting between Jonathan and PDP governors who also agreed to seek political, rather than legal solution to the party’s crisis.
The Dickson committee actually outdated the recent crisis. It was set up by a former national chairman of the party, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur in 2013. The committee recommended an all-inclusive, as well as free, fair and transparent convention within the second quarter of 2017 in Abuja.
Although Sheriff had, while receiving the report, promised that he would not vie for the position of national chairman any longer, the Makarfi-led committee, which protested the submission of the report to him, viewed his pledge with suspicion. Above all, they believe that his stand that he must superintend over the convention would give him the room to manipulate its outcome, so that in return, he would actualise his dream of becoming the party’s presidential flag-bearer come 2019.
The whole brouhaha took a new dimension on Friday when “Sheriff ’s men” hit hard on all those that participated the Thursday meeting.
Asked the implication of what transpired at the Yar’adua Centre, the legal adviser to Sheriff ’s faction, Bashir Maidugu said, “The truth is that I am still in shock, in the sense that the same impunity that led to the loss of 2015 elections and the subsequent crisis in the PDP continued on Thursday.”
He said Jonathan was deceived by the Makarfi faction to be part of the meeting, adding that they wanted to sideline Sheriff, and that was why they left the venue.
“Senator Ali Modu Sheriff is the recognised national chairman of the PDP. As at now, he is the only one recognised by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the security forces. He is the only one that can nominate anybody for any election on the platform of the party.
“It was the former president that brokered the meeting, and that was why we respected the invitation. But for Jonathan, we wouldn’t have honoured anybody’s invitation. But very unfortunately, there was no objection on the part of the former president,” he said.
Maidugu said the continuation of the meeting after Sheriff’s departure was illegal and the resolutions could not stand.
“The moment he left, it became an ordinary meeting. And they Sheriff’s second grouse, besides wanting party faithful to respect the Appeal Court judgement, was that the recommendation of the Dickson committee must be sacrosanct and respected by all. have the right to have an ordinary meeting. That is my opinion,” he said.
There are insinuations that the Bayelsa governor boycotted the meeting because of contentious issues, but his special adviser on media, Francis Agbo, said it was not true.
“His deputy was there. The governor did not go because of Pere Ajunwa’s lying in state, which was on Thursday. He had to personally receive the corpse,” Agbo said.
Sheriff ’s deputy national chairman, Dr Cairo Ojougboh, told Daily Trust on Sunday in a telephone interview that nobody would chase out the Borno governor.
“Any person who wants to ýform another party should go ahead. The only committee recognised by the party is that of Governor Dickson. We have withdrawn from any form of reconciliation,” he said.
On why the national secretary was seen at the premises after Sheriff had left, he said, “He is the director of the secretariat. He is in charge of the party’s documents, so why would you want him to leave early?”
The national secretary, Prof. Oladipo could not be reached at the time of filing this report, but a source close to him said ýhe was in tune with Sheriff, adding that both of them had a meeting and resolved that the chairman should stage a walkout in that circumstance.
The acting spokesman of the party, Bernard Mikko, told Daily Trust on Sunday that any NWC member sighted at the premises after Sheriff had left was being delayed because of their vehicles, which were blocked at the car park by other vehicles.
The national chairman is not a whim that can be pushed around by any desperate individual or group. After we left, we heard that ýthey constituted a committee. But, who is going to implement the report of that committee? Who constituted the committee? To whom will the report be submitted when we have already accepted the report of the Governor Dickson committee?
Another source, a senior party stalwart who did not want to be named, added another angle to the entire drama, accusing the former president of insincerity. He said Sheriff was tensed and had to walk out of the meeting because Jonathan reneged on their earlier agreement.
“Sheriff flew in from Egypt in the early hours of Thursday. Before he travelled, there was an agreement whereby Jonathan received the names of five persons from Makarfi and nine from Sheriff as delegates to the peace meeting. Another agreement was that the former president would deliver a speech as convener while Sheriff would give the opening remark. But when the national chairman arrived at the venue of the meeting, he saw many leaders and elders of the party belonging to the Makarfi group. And he was not even allowed to address the gathering. That angered him and he staged a walkout,” he said.