Some members of the Board of Trustees and former ministers under the administration of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan have vowed to reject the appointment of the new party chairman, Alhaji Ali Modu Sheriff.
In a BoT meeting that held on Thursday, the new chairman reportedly barged in to seek the members’ support for his appointment and many of the BoT members told him they would get back to him on the issue.
It was gathered that many members of the BoT, former ministers and some members of the National Working Committee (NWC) were disgruntled with the appointment of Sheriff, demanding that Adamu Mu’azu, the erstwhile chairman, be allowed to finish his tenure due to expire in March 2016.
It is believed that the disgruntled party members have concluded a plan to visit the former president to plead with him to prevail on the PDP governors who are staunchly behind Sheriff to reconsider their position or witness a mass exodus from the party, The Nation reports.
A source said: “We have asked a team to meet Jonathan and draw his attention to the grave implications of having Sheriff as PDP national chairman.
“We believe the ex-President was ill-informed.We want Jonathan to withdraw his backing so that Sheriff can step aside in March.
“We have weighed all options and the only midstream approach now is to prevail on Sheriff to complete Muazu’s tenure and quit in March.
“So Jonathan has to choose between the larger interest of the party and Sheriff.”
Another source, a former minister, said: “Well, at our session, some of us made it known that we cannot even wait till the end of March to determine our stay in PDP. Once Sheriff is in charge, we will abandon PDP for another party.
“The truth is dawning even on some of the governors and NWC members that Sheriff’s selection was unpopular among Nigerians. We now have deficit in the opposition politics we are playing because we have to seek equity with clean hands. This is why he should step down in March.”
Despite some protestations by many other former ministers, two of them have already gone ahead to congratulate the new party chairman. These are former FCT minister, Bala Mohammed, and former Education minister, Ibrahim Shekarau.