Former President, Olusegun Obasanjo

The controversy over which geo-political zone should produce the national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) deepened Tuesday with three zones now tugging at the party for the office. The zones include the North-east, South-west and South-east.

Each of the zones has pushed its arguments aimed at securing the position.

The party had zoned the chairmanship position to the North-east zone. 

But the South-west, using an advocacy group, has complained of marginalisation in the present power-sharing arrangement and called on President Goodluck Jonthan to concede the position to the zone. 

Speaking with THISDAY Tuesday after its closed doors extra-ordinary meeting held in Ibadan to review the recent political developments in the zone, the co-ordinator of the group, Mr. Bayo Akinloye, decried what he described as the marginalisation of the zone.

The meeting, which comprised former lawmakers, chairmen of local governments, appointed state functionaries from the six states in the zone – Oyo, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Ekiti and Lagos – noted that the marginalisation was inimical to the spirit of the constitution of the PDP as well as the Nigerian constitution which provide for equitable representation of all zones in the various organs and levels of government.

The group also called on the PDP leadership in the zone under former President Olusegun Obasanjo to urgently mobilise opinion leaders to meet with President 

Jonathan and demand the national chairmanship of the party. 

Akinloye said: “It is the contention of our group that the South-west geo-political zone is too important to the economic and political stability of the country called Nigeria to be left out of its political equation as being presently done.”

He assured the president that the zone would continue to support his administration and urged him to reciprocate the support of the South-west which returned 98 per cent of its delegates’ votes at the presidential primary and 61 per cent of its total votes cast in the general election.

The PDP had zoned the office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives to the South-west, but the members of the lower chamber of the National Assembly revolted against the party’s arrangement and voted Hon Aminu Tambuwal, from the North-west geo-political zone, thus denying the South-west zone of the number four position in the country.

In the North-east, there have been controversies over who should be the zone’s nominee as Adamawa State has opposed the candidature of Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, Prof. Jibril Aminu and Ambassador Hassan Adamu. 

And following the nomination of the Acting National Chairman of the party, Dr. Bello Haliru Mohammed, for ministerial appointment, some stalwarts of PDP in the North have called for an emergency convention where a properly elected chairman of the party would emerge.

The party chieftains expressed their objection to the appointive methods being used to fill the seat by the leadership of the party, arguing that during a proper convention such an acting chairman would have advantage over other interested aspirants.

This development, according to a source, has pitted the party’s National Caucus against the National Working Committee (NWC) which are billed to meet on the matter soon. 

It was gathered that some influential chieftains of the party from the North have insisted on an emergency national convention to produce the next PDP national chairman instead of the appointive procedure which the leaders of the party have used. 

According to the source, “when you appoint one of us to the post, the person would have undue advantage and when the national convention comes and the personality is interested in the post of national chairman, the party would have no option than to simply ratify him to the detriment of other aspirants.

“That is why we feel that the best thing to do in the circumstance is to revert back to the South-east zone so that a neutral person will be on the seat to conduct the national convention and supervise the election into national offices.”

Bello, it was gathered, may tender his resignation to the party’s National Secretary, Alhaji Kawu Baraje, within the week if he eventually scales through Senate’s screening as minister.

Those who are kicking against appointing anybody from the North-east zone where the position of the party’s national chairman had been zoned argued that it would place other aspirants to the seat at great disadvantage.

The South-east geo-political zone has also been in the league of zones demanding to produce the chairman of the party, given that Bello’s predecessor, Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo, who was unceremoniously asked to resign, is from the zone. The zone in recent times has raised the tempo of its agitation.

ThisDay

Posted by admin on Jul 6 2011. Filed under Party Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry