Stop Chasing Shadows, New PDP Tells Tukur …As Kaduna Gets State Chapter

L-R: Managing Director, Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas, Mr Babs Omotowa, Country Director, British Council, Nigeria, Connie Price and Centre Manager, British Council, Nigeria, Ijeoma Arguba, during the presentation of scholarship awards Post Graduate Students in Port Harcourt, yesterday

The Alhaji Abubakar Kawu Baraje-led national executive of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has advised embattled old PDP National Chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, to leave bona fide members of the party alone and stop chasing shadows.
The party in a statement issued yesterday by its National Publicity Secretary, Chief Eze Chukwuemeka Eze berated Tukur for allegedly spreading lies about chieftains of the party.
The statement listed those being blackmailed to include former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State.
Eze urged Tukur to stop making inflammatory statements about respected members of the party, and strive to pave way for the return of peace in the party.
In the statement, the party said, “we have read some of the utterances of the Bamanga Tukur-led faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and found most of them to be exasperating, disgusting, unacceptable and very unfortunate.
According to the statement, “to the Tukur group, Governor Amaechi is a traitor for standing firm on his rights. We consider some of these statements unbecoming of a leader of Tukur’s stature.
“By these acts, Tukur has demonstrated that he is intolerant, undemocratic and incapable of leading a democratic party like PDP. We urge him and members of his cabinet to stop making inflammatory statements capable of derailing the efforts of the Olusegun Obasanjo-led Elders Committee of the party to restore normalcy and unity amongst PDP members.
Meanwhile, Vice President Mohammed Namadi Sambo was last Monday put under intense political pressure as numerous pioneer members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in his home state of Kaduna declared for the splinter group led by Abubakar Kawu Baraje.
They also declared Sambo incompetent, adding that he lacked the wherewithal to lead the state.
Before Monday’s formal declaration of a parallel PDP, Mr. Sambo had been engaged in a series of power tussles with Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi, a former governor of Kaduna State and a current Senator.
The formation of a Kaduna State chapter of the new PDP was announced by the faction’s Chairman, Audi Yaro Makama, who had also chaired the state party from 2001 to 2007, and the Secretary, Gideon Morik, who had served in the Kaduna State House of Assembly from 1999 to 2007.
The new PDP, in a statement said that Morik was also a former local government chairman in the state.
According to the new party, “in the last few weeks, a political tsunami was unleashed on the nation with the emergence of a new leadership to pilot the affairs of our great party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The decision of the former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, and seven governors elected on the platform of the party, is not only worthy of commendation but worthy of emulation,” the statement noted.
It said, “Specifically, Governors Babangida Aliyu, Niger, Rabiu Kwankwaso, Kano; and Sule Lamido, Jigawa; including Aliyu Magatakarda Wammako, Sokoto; as well as Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, Rivers; Murtala Nyako, Adamawa; and Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed, Kwara, took the necessary step of saving the PDP from the hands of nihilists.
“The revolutionary decision to sack the erstwhile leadership under Alhaji Bamanga Tukur and replace it with the current one led by Alhaji Kawu Baraje needs to be replicated in all state chapters of the party, especially Kaduna State where the support base of the party has been shrinking since 2007 when Namadi Sambo became governor and decided to rubbish the party and its supporters to no end.
“The PDP in Kaduna State, therefore, proudly and wholeheartedly identifies with the new leadership of the party, under Alhaji Kawu Baraje and follows in the footsteps of its sister chapters of Adamawa, Jigawa and Taraba States in setting up new leadership to give our party a new lease of life.
“We are also reassuring our teeming supporters that they truly own the party, and not those with little or no inkling about PDP’s founding ideals, who do not have the passion for the party’s interest and growth.”
Declaring Sambo incompetent, the new PDP said, “fundamentally, this decision has been taken after deep reflections on happenings in Kaduna State since the elevation of Architect Namadi Sambo as Vice President.
It is instructive that since his elevation, the fortunes and prestige of the party in the state have been declining rather than improving, because he has been incapable of rallying the people under its umbrella.
Although this is hardly surprising since he lacks the political wherewithal and the requisite structure to preside over the politics of the state, but it was expected that he would come to terms with his inadequacies and enlist the support of established political actors.
This expectation has been a forlorn hope because the Vice President has surrounded himself with political paperweights. These hangers-on drive Sambo’s vehicle of political exclusionism by hunting for enemies even where they don’t exist.