A former Deputy National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and one of the chairmanship aspirants, Chief Bode George has have questioned the neutrality of the Chairman of the party’s National Caretaker Committee, Senator Ahmed Makarfi and asked him to step aside.
George said the move has become necessary because of the increasing evidence of a clash of interest over the choice of the next chairman of the party at the forthcoming national convention.
In a statement issued yesterday evening by the Director General, Bode George’s Campaign Organisation, Alhaji Ibrahim K. Aliu, the PDP chieftain alleged that Makarfi was brazenly allying with a particular aspirant in the South-south zone.
“For the sake of propriety, for the sake of all that is good and meaningful, for the sake of equitable balance and moral appropriateness, we strongly advise Makarfi to resign his position forthwith because he has been severely compromised.
“He can no longer play the role of a neutral arbiter who stands far above the fray. He is already tarred and soiled in the muddy waters of partisan prejudice,” he said.
George said it was increasingly disturbing and rather untidy the role Makarfi is presently playing in the processes towards the party national convention on December 9.
George said Makarfi’s action, “to put it mildly, is sickening, untoward, blatantly tendentious, totally stripped of the typical moral high ground that often defines a well-meaning, God-fearing arbitrating leadership.
“Apparently spurred by personal ambition of contesting for the presidential office in 2019, Makarfi is brazenly allying with a particular aspirant in the South-south to deliberately distort the process, muddle equity and invariably destroy the democratic process for transient personal gains,” he said.
“Everywhere you look, Makarfi is planting the agents of his favourite South-south candidate to stage-manage warped and skewed congresses in an undisguised mockery of all the normative patterns of our founding fathers whose enduring forte about equity, justice and fairness is now being flung into the gutter.
“In a way, Makarfi has evidently resolved to repeat the farcical malady that characterised the debacle in Port Harcourt last year.
“We have equally resolved that we will not be led along this ruinous path again. Never! Makarfi should now do the most honorable thing by walking away and face his ambition squarely. He cannot use a privileged non-elective position to wangle undue advantages to his own side. It is patently unacceptable.
“We need to redeem our party by being faithful to the great ideals of our founding fathers. We really believe that elders of the party across the nation should summon an emergency summit to deliberate on the right way to restrategise our party and rectify the wrongs on the ground.
“All the elders across the zones must take it as a priority that this party can only be redeemed and restore to its winning ways when we are all sincere, genuine, and anchored on the path of salvaging righteousness,” he said.