PDP is already dead

monjola sotubo

May 23, 2016 11:24 AM

The crisis in the party began after the chairmanship was zoned to the North-East, an indication that then occupant, Ali Modu Sheriff was planning to elongate his tenure during the convention.

Ali Modu Sheriff

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Actually, the party had two conventions, because as the original one was holding in Port Harcourt, another was going on in Abuja.

The crisis in the party began after the chairmanship was zoned to the North-East, an indication that then occupant, Ali Modu Sheriff was planning to elongate his tenure during the convention.

This led many members of the party to revolt and start plans for their own separate convention.

“When I told you that we were planning our convention, some of you thought we were joking. We just appointed some coordinators now. Before the end of the week, I think by Thursday, we would address a press conference to announce all the state coordinators,” a source, said to be a former governor, told Punch about the alternate convention.

“Whatever Sheriff and his co-jesters are doing would soon become a nullity and I can tell you that illegality would soon jam illegality,” the source added.

Sheriff eventually attempted to cancel the convention due to a series of court cases against it.

“Members of the National Working Committee and I have been working since morning. We are confronted with a lot of challenges. The challenges are court cases and taking into account the decision of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) not to supervise the election into the office of Chairman, Secretary and Auditor,” he said at a news conference in Port Harcourt on Saturday.

“Based on the order of the court and on the account that our party is responsible and law abiding with high respect to the judiciary and courts, we do hereby state and put off the National Convention,” he added.

However, the convention still held and participants agreed to remove Sheriffand dissolve the party’s National Working Committee.

The motion was said to have been raised by Senate Minority Leader, Godswill Akpabio who also pushed for the appointment of a caretaker committee saying “The committee shall be known as the National Caretaker Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party.”

After Sheriff’s removal, Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike said:

“We will not allow the PDP to die or suffer divisions under our watch. History will never forgive us if we watch the party die.”

It’s a pity that Wike doesn’t realize that the PDP is already dead. The PDP died in 2015, and it has still refused to resurrect.

The opposition party refused to learn from the same mistake that led to its woeful loss in the 2015 elections and is still allowing discord to thrive within its ranks.

Sheriff will go to court to contest his removal, PDP chieftain, Ibrahim Mantu and his group of “Concerned Peoples Democratic Party Stakeholders” have rejected the caretaker committee and the South West arm of the group is still sour about not being considered for the chairmanship slot.

The PDP is in shambles, yet its members go about boasting that the 2019 election is theirs for the taking.

The PDP has been given the opportunity of a lifetime to launch a worthy opposition against the All Progressives Congress (APC) government, but instead it is allowing a social media miscreant run its anti-APC campaign while its real members faff around.

If the PDP really wants to be counted as a worthy party to lead the new Nigeria, it must realize that it is already dead and that it’s fast running out of time to resurrect.

monjola sotubo