The Chairman of the PDP Board of Trustees (BoT), Senator Walid Jibrin says it is unfair for the party’s presidential candidate and national chairman to emerge from the same region.
He said this during an appearance on Channels Television‘s “Sunday Politics”.
Like Jibrin, the PDP national chairman, Senator Iyorchia Ayu and presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar are northerners.
Recall that a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Femi Fani-Kayode recently called the PDP a “sectional party“.
His comment came amid a crisis that followed the emergence of Atiku as the presidential candidate and his subsequent choice of Delta State Governor, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa as his running mate.
Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State, who placed second in the PDP presidential primary, has been at loggerheads with the presidential candidate and the party hierarchy after he was purportedly passed over for running mate to Atiku.
Wike’s camp is said to be demanding the resignation of Ayu as a precondition for peace talks.
Speaking on Channels TV, Jibrin said the national caucus, BoT and the national executive committee of the party are yet to schedule their meetings because they are awaiting the recommendation of the committees set up to reconcile the aggrieved members.
“To tell the truth, it will not be fair for the president of Nigeria to be from the north, the chairman of the party from the north and the BoT chairman from the north.
“By next week we will get the report. And when we find out that somebody is wrong in what has happened we will come up openly to tell the party that it is wrong. Whatever we can do, we will do it in the interest of the party to make the party remain as PDP,” he said.
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He expressed readiness to step down from his position to give way for peace in the party.