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Former National Publicity Secretary of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Kola Ologbondiyan, has said the opposition party might face a worse crisis if it failed to address one of the issues that contributed to its failure in the 2023 presidential election.
Ologbondiyan said the party would face another crisis if it failed to zone its national chairmanship position to the North Central region.
He said this when he appeared on Channels TV’s morning programme, Sunrise Daily, on Thursday.
The PDP has been in disarray since 2022, following its national convention, which produced former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar as its 2023 presidential candidate.
This did not go down well with some party members, as disgruntled PDP governors led by Nyesom Wike, worked against the party.
Currently, the PDP is divided over its national secretary position as Sunday Ude-Okoye and Samuel Anyanwu are locked in a legal battle.
However, when asked if there were other issues the PDP needed to deal with to ensure the opposition party stabilises ahead of the 2027 general election, Ologbondiyan said the national chairmanship position, if not zoned to the North Central, would disrupt the party again.
“We saw it coming, and anybody in the Peoples Democratic Party, who is interested in the party’s life cannot claim not to know that this would happen.
“Having said that, I still insist — and I believe I speak for the majority of North Central — that even if it’s going to be for a day, the North Central must be allowed to take over the office of the substantive national chairman, which was vacated by Senator Iyorchia Ayu, through which Ambassador Ilyasu Damagum assumed office in acting capacity, which means it’s not substantive.
“So, whether the life of the present executive would end in December or before then, the North Central should be given the opportunity. Otherwise, the challenge that led to G5 is still alive. It may not function in the same way, but it would be on record that the party at a point was unjust to the people of North Central.”
Meanwhile, the PDP Disciplinary Committee headed by Chief Tom Ikimi, on Thursday, said it has stepped down petitions against three members of the National Working Committee, NWC to ensure the ongoing reconciliation.
In a statement, Ikimi said though the committee has received petitions against three members of the NWC, it declined to commence actions against them so as to enable the reconciliation efforts of the PDP governors forum and the party’s Board of Trustees to materialise.
He, however, said a former governor of Benue State, Samuel Ortom, would appear before it next week Wednesday, and urged other who were invited to come with their witnesses
This, nonetheless, the crisis in the PDP has polarised the South east after stakeholders of the party from the zone condemned moves to remove Senator Samuel Anyanwu as national secretary.
The stakeholders, in a statement in Owerri, capital of Imo State, maintained that Anyanwu was the substantive PDP National Secretary based on the stay of execution issued by the Court of Appeal.
“The stay of execution has said it all. There is only one National Secretary, and it remains Senator Samuel Anyanwu,” they stated in a statement by the Chairman of South-East PDP Stakeholders Forum, Chief Maxwell Okoye.
Similarly, the party’s unity Project Group, has chided the Board of Trustees (BoT) of the PDP for arrogating to itself the powers it did not have.
The PDP unity project group further said the actions of the party’s BoT amounted to acts of impunity, because it arrogated to itself the power it did not have.
Addressing a press conference, Chairman of the PDP Unity Project Group, Mfong Usoro said, ”what happened Wednesday marks another inking day in the PDP when Senator Adolphus Wabara, the supposedly PDP Board of Trustees Chairman gathered strangers in a hotel in Abuja to carryout a broad daylight infamy and a condemnable act of grave infraction on the PDP constitution.”
Usoro said, ”While we expected Wabara to first use the above section to examine his junky and lackluster leadership as BoT Chairman before further applying it to members, Wabara should also know that the matter in context is already before the court.
”Therefore it’s only a court can adjudicate, and not Board of Trustees (BoT) or any party organ,” he stressed.
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