THE Senator representing Ogun West senatorial district at the National Assembly, Buruji Kashamu, has called on all stakeholders in the Peoples Democratic Party including founding fathers, governors and delegates, to allow a party chieftain from the South-West to emerge as the PDP national chairman.
This, he argued, would save the party from disintegration, adding that it was in tandem with the agreement reached ahead of the party’s botched Port Harcourt convention.
Kashamu stated this on Sunday in a statement where he chronicled the detailed perceived intrigues allegedly being orchestrated by the National Caretaker Chairman of the party, Ahmed Makarfi, to work against the interest of the South-West geopolitical zone.
He accused the national caretaker committee of attempt to manipulate the forthcoming convention to satisfy a micro-interest that could derail the ongoing reconciliation process at bringing the party back into national reckoning.
The senator said it was frustrating that rather than working for the convention to finally heal the wounds of the party from the last election, “some governors and the national chairman of the party are busy perfecting plans to suit their personal interest against the general interest of millions of party members nationwide.”
Kashamu said, “I urge our existing founding fathers, all the PDP party men and women, convention delegates from the North, the South-East, South-West and the South-South, including Governor Nyesom Wike, to allow the voice of reason to prevail and allow the emergence of the first-ever South-West national chairman of the PDP as previously agreed pre-Port Harcourt convention. Let us jointly prevent the hijacking of the PDP which, more likely than not, would lead to her dismemberment.”
He alleged that signals from the national caretaker committee towards the upcoming convention portended danger for the resurgence of the party.
“The forthcoming elective PDP national convention would rank first in the mischievously muddled up zoning arrangements of party offices in the history of the party. Even at the inception of the PDP when the presidential ticket was contentious and generally zoned to the South, it was unanimously resolved after being robustly debated by all the six geopolitical zones and in the interest of party unity and prevailing national exigencies without clandestine moves.
“Not only that, the electoral process of that convention, particularly the delegate’s list compilation, was painstakingly transparent, lacking in impunity and easily verifiable, unlike current disobedience of court judgements/orders and is outright ceding of party state structures to favourites. That’s the legacy upon which the PDP was built by the founding fathers unlike this Makarfi’s work-to-answer manipulations. Witnessing this ongoing charade, one can’t but salute the PDP founding fathers for their uncommon integrity and penchant for public order and service. The least that could be done to the memory of Solomon Lar, Chief Sunday Awoniyi, and Dr Alex Ekwueme, etc, being the dead among them, is for major stakeholders to rise in unison to obstruct the current administrative manipulations of some few people in chanced official positions over the multitudes. Otherwise, how can a generally agreed national chairmanship zoned to the South-West pre-Port Harcourt convention now become indefinable under an unelected Makarfi as chairman?
Meanwhile, two national chairmanship aspirants in the PDP, Chief Olabode George, and Prince Uche Secondus, have lauded the Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, for his developmental projects in the state despite dwindling economy.
Describing him as a record setter, they also commended him for his unwavering political activism, saying Fayose is a national political figure who ensured that the voice of the opposition is not silenced.
According to a statement by Fayose’s Chief Press Secretary, Idowu Adelusi, they made the comments during their respective campaign tour of Ekiti State on Saturday.
George, a former military governor of the old Ondo State, said as somebody who is familiar with the state, everybody could see that Fayose had changed the face of Ekiti with great developmental projects.