Fresh crisis has erupted in the opposition Peoples Democratic Party after a former Minister of Information and a founding member of the party, Jerry Gana, led a group of other leading members to announce the takeover of the party from its national chairman, Ali Sheriff.
Mr. Gana, who appears to head a group within the PDP called “Concerned Stakeholders”, met on Thursday at the Nicon Luxury Hotel in Abuja.
After the meeting, which was co-chaired by a former Deputy President of the Senate, Ibrahim Mantu, a former Minister of Education, Tunde Adeniran, and media mogul, Raymond Dokpesi, a communique was released rejecting the decision of the party’s National Executive Committee, NEC, to extend the tenure of Mr. Sheriff to May 21, 2016.
The group said as far they were concerned, the tenure of the National Working Committee, NWC, expired on March 24, 2016.
The group said a national convention should have been held to either elect a new NWC or approve the composition of a caretaker committee.
“The purported extension of the tenure of the Chairman and other members of the national working committee by the Party by the NEC was an illegality and therefore untenable and contrary to the provisions of our party Constitution which gives such powers ONLY to the National Convention of the Party,” the group said.
They also said in line with that position “all actions purportedly taken by the said NEC and the National Working Committee, including the Ward, Local Government, State Congresses and the planned National Convention of the Party slated for the 21st of May 2016 in Port Harcourt, Rivers State constitute a nullity and are of no effect”.
They equally said the zoning arrangement as announced by the chairman of the “purported” Zoning Committee, the governor of Akwa-Ibom State, Emmanuel Udom was unacceptable, because it ran contrary to the PDP’s “established principles and practice”, which, they said, had sustained the party in continuous unity for the last 18 years.
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