C’R 2012 guber: PDP chieftains at war over membership cards

Cold war is brewing within the Cross River State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as some chieftains are said to be fighting dirty over who controls and takes custody the membership cards.

Daily Sun investigations revealed that the leadership of the party has been factionalised into two following moves by Ambassador Soni Abang, Nigeria’s envoy to Mali, to contest against the incumbent, Governor Liyel Imoke, in the pending 2012 governorship race.

It was learnt that since the rumour started making the rounds that Ambassador Abang, the former PDP state chairman, was gearing up to throw his hat into the ring, there had been subterranean moves to ease out his supporters from the party before the congresses to possibly pave way for the incumbent’s smooth sail.

Daily Sun further learnt that the just-concluded party revalidation and registration exercise was a case in point as it was skewed to exclude some diehard loyalists and chieftains of the party perceived to be sympathetic to Chief Abang’s ambition.

Across the state, an authoritative source confided in Daily Sun that from Bakassi to Bekwarra local government areas, some powerful forces were said to have remote-controlled the exercise in such a way as to discreetly de-register “opponents,” Ambassador Soni Abang’s supporters by handing over the registration materials to only trusted “allies” and keeping the party register and cards away from them.

Attesting to the plots to ease out some people from the party, the former legal adviser and secretary of PDP in the state, Mr. Ogar Ndoma Egodo, in an exclusive interview with Daily Sun at his office in Calabar, said the caucus leadership across the state had devised a means to de-register some party members because they were alleged to be supporting Abang or are his close associates in the name of playing politics.

Egodo, who was the immediate past chairman of Ikom Local Government Area, disclosed that “moves to shut out some stakeholders on the pretext of protecting Imoke’s mandate for 2012 would only aggravate internal wrangling, acrimony, breed distrust among the leadership, which ultimately could cause mass defection of dissatisfied members who would want to exercise their right to choose who they want.”

Expressing anger at the turn of events, the former council boss said, “my caucus leader decided to de-register me by not allowing me access to the party card and the register; he handed over the cards to a former councillor who knows next to nothing about the workings of the party just because I attended new yam festival with Ambassador Abang and his sister’s wedding ceremony at Iso Bendeghe. So, automatically I am a public enemy and should be excluded from the party I suffered to build in my Ikom chapter.”
Questioning whether it was a crime to support another aspirant within the same party, he lashed out at caucus leaders, describing them as “overzealous personages and sycophants who are all out to deceive the incumbent under the guise of being loyal to the throne.

“And presently,” he continued, “we are now being haunted, intimidated and arrested by security operatives on the charge of illegal possession of party membership card,” adding “I doubt whether I will be alive till next year to even witness the election because of my support for another aspirant.”

Egodo, however, advised party leadership to ensure that everybody was given a level-playing ground rather than dissipating energy haunting enemies that did not exist as such could be counter-productive.
But denying any moves to de-register or arrest party members, the leader of Ikom caucus of PDP, Mr. Bassey Okim, in a telephone interview told Daily Sun that everybody who needed to be registered had done so in their wards and wondered why insinuations of plots to exclude members when the party leadership warned all and sundry to come out because the party was a big family that welcomed all.

The former special adviser to Governor Liyel Imoke on security and present special adviser on legal matters said, “after the first set of PDP membership registration, some supporters of our opponent decided to print fake cards and buy fake registers. So, opinion leaders in my local government area decided to lodge complain with the police to avoid breach of peace and the matter is still being investigated and some of the boys have left the town for fear of arrest.”

-Sun

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Posted by admin on Oct 25 2011. Filed under Cross River, Party Politics, Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP), State News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry