The Board of Trustees (BoT), of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, formally took over the party’s national secretariat yesterday, promising that it would do everything to ensure that normalcy returned to the party as soon as possible.
This came on a day two members of the House of Representatives defected from the party to All Progressives Congress , APC.
The BoT members were led by the chairman, Senator Walid Jibrin, secretary, Ambassador Ojo Maduekwe, Dan Sulaiman, former Deputy President of the Senate, Ibrahim Mantu and former Deputy Senate Whip, Stella Omu.
In a brief remark before the BOT members went into a closed door meeting with staff of the party, Chairman of the board, Senator Walid Jibrin, said as the only organ of the party not encumbered by any court injunction, the board was obliged to take over the party in order not to create room for a vacuum.
According to him, though the expanded meeting of the BoT of the party last week enjoined the caretaker committee, headed by Senator Ahmed Makarfi, last week, the committee is incapacitated by court injunctions filed against it.
He said the board requested the Inspector General of Police to seal the party secretariat last week in order to avoid a break down of law and order from the contending forces.
“We want to thank the staff for your devotion and dedication to work. This place was sealed for sometimes by the Nigerian police. The reason was to keep our building safe. I want to congratulate the police for a job well done. What we needed was to safeguard our property and to safeguard your lives. We the BoT are interested to be in charge of the assets and liabilities of the PDP. We have been asked, under the constitution, to be in charge and it is in that respect that the IGP, having considered the importance for the staff, directed that this place be opened and entrusted in the hands of the BoT because it remains the only legal body now,” he said.
Jibrin said the leadership crisis would not affect the fielding of candidates for the forthcoming elections, especially Edo State governorship election slated for October, 2016.
Earlier in his remarks, the Secretary of the BoT, Amb. Ojo Madueke, reiterated that since there was no court order challenging the eligibility of the BoT to run the party, the body had to step in to avoid creating a vacuum.
He said the national caretaker committee of the party, led by Senator Ahmed Makarfi, was operating outside the secretariat, expressing hope that the crisis in the party would soon be resolved.
The former deputy president of the senate, Senator Ibrahim Mantu, maintained that the PDP would have run Nigeria for 60 years as speculated by some of its leaders, if it had remained resolute with the founding philosophy, vision and mission of its founding fathers.
“Those of us who have been in the system right from 1999; whether I like it or not, were part of the problem. That is why I say we need to apologise to Nigerian people. We need to apologise to God in Heaven who gave us power and we misused that power.
‘’But we are now saying as born again people we must do things differently, we should be seen to be doing things in accordance to the aspiration of the people.
“We apologise to God and Nigerians who gave us power but we got intoxicated with it and it collapsed. It is impunity that ruined our party. We didn’t allow the voice of the people to work in our system. We didn’t say no to recklessness, imposition and impunity.’’ Mantu said. – Vanguard.
