Senate rejects 1, confirms 4 CBN board members Dogara heads nPDP's reconciliation team
Aselect committee made up of top presidency officials and five members from a faction of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) will start sitting on Monday to resolve the dispute which is threatening to tear the party apart.
The nPDP, which included prominent personalities like Senate President Bukola Saraki, House Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, a few serving and former governors as well as senators had demanded for such meeting with a veil threat to pull out of the party if their demands were not met.
The nPDP yesterday named Speaker Dogara as leader of the new Peoples
Democratic Party (nPDP) at the talks.
Sources told Daily Trust Dogara’s name along with others was submitted to presidency yesterday.
Other members are Senators Barnabas Gemade, Danjuma Goje and Adamu Aliero from Benue, Gombe and Kebbi States respectively.
The chairman of the nPDP bloc in the APC, Abubakar Kawu Baraje is also to serve as a member of the panel.
They are to meet with four other members appointed by the presidency and the all APC, headed by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
That decision was taken on Tuesday at a larger meeting held between Osinbajo and the nPDP members in Abuja.
While the presidency and APC would bring four members, the nPDP would produce five.
Our sources said: “We have submitted the names of the five people that were agreed. They’re headed by Speaker Dogara, while Baraje, Sen Goje, Gemade and Adamu Aliero are to serve as members.
Asked if they did not consider the fact that the 5-man nPDP delegation mainly consists of northerners, the source said: “No, we only considered the leadership.
“Our interest is good governance, respect for the rule of law and the way our congresses were conducted. Those are the issues we want them to resolve,” the source said.
On whether there is time frame for the assignment, the source said: that four the “No, since we submitted the names, we’re waiting for them to invite our people. They’re the ones to give the time for the meeting so that the issues will be resolved.”
The nPDP members in a letter dated April 27, said they were not fairly treated in the APC, and issuing a 7-day ultimatum to see president Muhammadu Buhari for a resolution.
They met with the APC national leadership last week after which they held another meeting with Osinbajo on Monday. on “general discussions,” the next scheduled meeting “Would go into the business of discussing the (former nPDP) specific demands”.
Shuaibu said, “When we got to the meeting venue in Aguda House, the vice president felt we were too many. He said for the meeting to achieve any meaningful result, we needed a much smaller group.
“He suggested that nPDP brings three representatives, and then himself, the Attorney General and myself to make up three so that we have six. But they (nPDP) insisted that they needed more than three representatives and we finally settled on five. From there, we went into general discussions; nothing specific.
“We said when they (nPDP) are ready with their five representatives, and then we will sit down and go into the business of discussing the specific demands. There was no time during Monday’s meeting.
“The condition was given that Sen. Bukola Saraki’s Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) trial must be withdrawn. I don’t know where they got that story from. I have a strong feeling that whoever wrote that story was only being speculative because nobody could have said that,” Shuaibu said.
He added that the basis for last Monday’s meeting was the content of the former nPDP’s letter submitted to the party and copied the president and vice president.
“The content of the letter, which is now public, is what the basis of their demands is. At the next meeting on Monday, we will go into the specifics. That letter will be x-rayed point by point,” he said.