Politics
Jigawa PDP Inaugurates 29-Member Reconciliation Committee
The Jigawa State Chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has inaugurated a 29-member reconciliation committee to unite and bring back its lost glory in the state.
Inaugurating the committee in Dutse on Wednesday, the state party chairman, Alhaji Babandi Ibrahim, said it was set up to immediately reconcile all aggrieved members and bring back those that had left.
Ibrahim said the committee was set up two days after the state congress election of the party on January 10.
He said that the move was part of efforts to unite members of the party and make it stronger in order to wrestle power from the ruling party at both the state and federal levels.
The state party chairman, who said the committee’s duties would take off immediately, urged its members to discharge their duties with fear of God, honesty and fairness.
The Tide source reports that the committee has Dr Aminu Abdullahi as its chairman and Alhaji Nasir Sparo as the secretary.
In his remarks, a former governor of the state and PDP chieftain, Alhaji Sule Lamido, urged the committee to do its work diligently.
Lamido said the committee should ensure that all aggrieved members that left the party after it lost in 2015 were convinced to return.
Speaking to newsmen after the inauguration, the chairman of the committee, who is also a former Secretary to the State Government (SSG), assured that the committee would work hard to unite the party.
“Our task is a difficult one and also a simple one at the same time.
“These (aggrieved members) are people we are familiar with. We worked with them, we’re friends and we’re brothers and sisters.
“This is a task we’ve started as volunteer movement within; now we’ve been formally asked to do it.
“The basic principle in reconciliation is that there is no victor, no vanquished. So, nobody is coming back to the party as a prisoner of war, because there was no war.”
“It was just a misunderstanding between brothers and sisters. So, this is the way we see it and this is the way we will go about it.
Politics
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Mr Ojukwu, who recently returned to the interim National Working Committee led by Senator Esther Nenadi Usman, noted that the party had 34 elected members in the House of Representatives, eight Senators, and 80 members at the state Houses of Assembly after the 2023 general elections.
“Now we lost all of them,” he said. “I don’t think we have as many as five members in the National Assembly.”
The former national officer of the LP talked to journalists in Abuja and said he chose to join the caretaker committee led by Senator Nenadi-Usman because they are now the officially recognized leaders of the Party.
“I chose to work with the caretaker committee to help save the Labour Party, for the benefit of the party. I also want to use this chance to ask my colleagues at the national, state, and local government levels to come together and help rebuild our party.
“Another election is around the corner. We lost everything we have. They have left to other political parties. So I’ll reach out to all my friends in the other group to get together and work on making this party stronger again.
“The caretaker committee has formed a reconciliation committee. Let’s come together and talk so that we can restore the first opposition political party in Nigeria.”
Mr Ojukwu, who was part of the Julius Abure’s group, said there are no more factions in the LP.
He added, “There is a court ruling, and since it is valid, the right people are in the correct positions.”
He urged Barr Abure and others to drop the legal cases they have filed because they are not helping the party.
“Litigations are killing political parties”, he said. “They’ve seen many political parties disappear because of legal battles, and the Labor Party is losing support every day, which makes me feel sad.”
Mr Ojukwu said he did not think joining the Senator Nenadi-Usman’s NWC was a betrayal of the Abure group, describing himself as “the oxygen” of that faction.
“I’m with this group because of the verdict. But I never betrayed anybody. Rather, I was betrayed,” he added.
