PDP crisis deepens as party zones chairmanship to North-East

Some members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) protested on Thursday at the party’s national headquarters in Abuja, shortly after the National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting.
The protesters said they were angry because of the zoning of the chairmanship position to the North-East to favour the acting National Chairman, Senator Ali Modu Sheriff.
Before the protest, NEC had approved the recommendation of its zoning committee to retain the national chairmanship position of the party in the North-East.
NEC also zoned the position of the presidential candidate for the 2019 election to the North.
To the protesters, most of whom are from the South-West, “this selfish stance of the NEC may lead to factions in our party”.
They said it was wrong for the party to zone the positions of chairmanship and presidential candidate to the North.
One of them said: “We know the game that is going on. Go and check the political history of Sheriff. He always works for the opposition. Even when he was a governor on the platform of the ANPP, he was working for PDP when Obasanjo was the president.
“Today, Buhari is the president and Sheriff’s son is married to Buhari’s daughter. What they are planning is for him to continue as national chairman, then later become the presidential candidate and eventually work for Buhari’s re-election. We also know the governors supporting him. This is not going to be easy for them at all”.
Even as the protest was going on, Sheriff said that he was yet to make up his mind on whether to contest ‎for the chairmanship position in the forthcoming national convention billed for Port Harcourt, Rivers State on May 21.
Sheriff was appointed in February for three months to complete the tenure of the North-East.
The PDP zoning committee, headed by Akwa Ibom State governor, Mr Emmanuel Udom, also zoned the position of the deputy national chairman to South-South and national secretary to the South-West.
Sheriff assured that he would make his decision public “when I make up my mind to seek re-election. We have successfully finished the meeting. We adopted all the resolutions without any dissenting voice. We have also agreed that the body will meet again on May 11 on constitutional review.
“We have received report from convention committee and they said they are ready for convention. Therefore, everything we have said to you before is on course,” he said.
Governor Ibrahim Dankwambo of Gombe State, who spoke on behalf of the PDP Governors Forum, assured that the forum would abide by the decision of NEC.
Some of the governors in attendance at the meeting were Nyesom Wike (Rivers), Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi (Enugu), Dave Umahi (Ebonyi), Ifeanyi Okowa (Delta), Hassan Dankwambo (Gombe)‎, Udom Emmanuel (Akwa Ibom) and Ben Ayade (Cross River‎).