A group of leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Adamawa State, has urged President Goodluck Jonathan to ignore calls for the removal of the party’s National Chairman, Bamanga Tukur.
The group in a statement made available on Monday in Abuja and signed by Umar Ardo, its coordinator, also condemned reports of a vote of no-confidence purportedly passed on Mr. Tukur, by some members of the National Working Committee, NWC of the party.
The group said it disagreed with the reasons given by the people calling for the ouster of Mr. Tukur.
“We recall with grave concern the same antics employed by the same members of the NWC, then led by Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, to reverse the dissolution of the Pro-Nyako Kugama-led EXCO in Adamawa State in January last year, thereby undermining the very authority of the NWC itself and creating the basis for the current distrust between them and the National Chairman,” they said.
They also said they viewed the current act as another attempt by the same reactionary forces that then tried to undermine the political standing of the National Chairman and in the process almost wrecked constitutionalism in the party’s affairs.
The same forces, they said, were at it again; this time, trying to foster needless constitutional crises on the party in an election year on the altar of personal animosity and ego-driven avowed opponents of the National Chairman.
“It is a well-known prophetic saying that a house divided against itself will surely fall,” they added.
The Adamawa PDP pleaded with the President to see the current action of the members of the NWC as an act principally aimed at dividing the house and not uniting it.
“They failed then on Adamawa; they will fail now too, on Nigeria,” they said.
They also called on the president to take note of the fact that opposition to the PDP was mainly coming from the Hausa-Fulani core North, to which Mr. Tukur belonged, adding that many of them were still holding on to the PDP on account of Mr. Tukur’s leadership.
“The removal of the Chairman and the politics of his replacement will indeed unlock several chains of events the final outcome of which no one can fathom for the party,” they warned.
Defection not due to Tukur
The Adamawa PDP said those who left the party did not do so on account of the National Chairman but on account of the peculiar irreconcilable local politics in their constituencies.
“The chairman is merely a convenient excuse,” they said.
They said Mr. Tukur was duly elected in the party’s national convention and his removal will only further denigrate the party’s standing on the sanctity of elections and constitutionalism as the basis of holding elective public office in Nigeria.
Such denigration, they said, would create in the populace a rejectionist tendency towards the party that could adversely affect its electoral fortunes in 2015.
“We therefore appeal to the president not only to prevail on all the key national organs of the party to see reason and protect the National Chairman’s Office, but he should also call to immediate order these reactionary members of the PDP’s NWC to henceforth put the interest of the party above all other considerations. Their accusations against the National Chairman are lame and deceitful, and the dose of medicine they prescribed is far more deadly than the ailment being suffered,” they said.
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