Politics

Reject Proposal On Zoning To Save PDP, Leaders’ Forum Tells NEC

Published

4 years ago

October 5, 2021

The leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has been urged to reject the zoning arrangement as proposed by the Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi-led committee.

A group, the PDP National Leaders Forum, in a statement by its convener and a chieftain of the party from Ogun state, Reverend Olusola Salau, Tuesday, called on the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party which meets on Thursday to jettison what it described as the self-serving proposal and maintain the status quo.

The statement made available to newsmen in Abuja, noted that the composition of the Zoning Committee of the party was faulty for the reason that it was lopsided and deliberately skewed to satisfy the interest of a section of the party.

“For instance, Benue State has five representatives while Osun has no single representative. Even when that observation was raised at the meeting, a certain Governor from the South South bullied everybody to ignore something as fundamental as that,” Salau said.

The statement also raised the allegation that some members of the committee used the opportunity to serve on the committee to oil their political scheming at the detriment of the party.

“We have it on good authority that one member of the committee who is a Governor in a South-South state was busy offering monetary inducements to sway other members from toeing the logical path. We know who this Governor is and we are aware that he is nursing a presidential ambition. We do not have any objection to his ambition. However, we will not accept a process that will make anyone fetch the presidential ticket of our great party through a manipulative process,” the statement added.

Also, the group described the procedure by which the zoning committee rendered its report as “obnoxious and not known to the established pattern of how similar previous reports are presented in the party.

“The report is self-serving, ridiculous and embarrassing because the PDP NEC empowered and mandated the committee to recommend zoning of party offices. The normal practice is that the report must first be laid before the NEC for consideration and the party will then approve and announce final ratification just like the Governor Bala-led fact finding committee on the 2019 presidential election.

“Its report was laid before the NEC and approved. But in this case, the Governors and zoning committee acted in bad faith and if care is not taken the party will pay dearly for it in 2023,” the group posited.

Another area of objection which the group cited is that the current zoning arrangement in the PDP stipulates that the National Chairman’s position is supposed to remain in the South.

Therefore, “must we punish the South alongside the outgoing chairman? Why is the committee in a hurry to throw away the baby with the bath water?

“For the avoidance of doubt there have been two zoning arrangements in the history of the PDP: one in 2007 and the other in 2017 which was to lapse in 2025. This arrangement gave the south the privilege to produce the national chairmanship of the party till 2025.

“If there were to be any zoning, it should be amongst the three zones of the South and, in that case, the Southwest that has never attained the position of the PDP National Chairman is more deserving of the position. This is even more so that the next two governorship elections before the 2023 general election will be in Osun and Ekiti. Thus, what will the PDP take to the Southwest to enable the zone to give our party a deserving victory in those two crucial elections?”

The group continues, “The PDP has a pedigree of being the only political party in Nigeria that comes to intervene when the country is at a boiling point as it is today. Be it at the time that the country was transitioning from military junta to civilian rule or when the country was burdened with a leadership vacuum that necessitated the doctrine of necessity, the PDP has always been the party that steers the country off the cliffs.

“This time around, Nigeria needs the PDP to come to its rescue once again. Our party needs to put someone with capacity and experience forward to do this job – not some characters that can’t even put the national interest ahead of their political ambition in a simple party assignment.

“We believe that Nigeria has never been this divided and broken and it is expedient on the principle of natural priority that another person from the North, who is more qualified and experienced should be our party’s candidate for the job to get Nigeria fixed.

“It is not the responsibility of the PDP to toe the line of ethic divisiveness that our main opponents are known for. Ours is a party built on principles and mutual respect for all shades of Nigerians.

“It is on this note that we humbly demand that the National Executive Committee of our great party reject in its entirety the submissions of the zoning committee. Zoning arrangement is a responsibility of the highest decision making organ of the party, not some self-serving governors and their cohorts.”

Politics

Why I left Tinubu’s Govt — Former Aide Aliyu Audu Declares

Published

4 days ago

June 16, 2025

Editor

A former Senior Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Public Affairs, Aliyu Audu, has revealed that he resigned from the administration in order to actively campaign against Tinubu’s re-election bid in 2027.

Speaking on Monday during an interview on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily, Audu said his decision was driven by a matter of “principle and conscience,” as he accused the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) of attempting to turn Nigeria into a one-party state.

“It confirmed it on one hand, and on the other hand, it strengthened my resolve to not work for him in 2027,” Audu said, referring to Tinubu’s Democracy Day speech where the president claimed to enjoy seeing the opposition in disarray.

“I couldn’t in all honesty and in my conscience be in his government knowing I’m plotting against removal in 2027, because I will, and by God, we will remove him. Collectively, Nigerians will install a leader that will be our chosen, not his chosen. Not emilokan (my turn), but awa lokan (our turn), in fact, gbogbo wa lokan (all of us).”

He also criticised the inclusion of Nyesom Wike, a PDP member and current Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, in the APC-led government, questioning his loyalty and the legitimacy of such a move.

“What is Wike doing in our government? If he’s going to leave the PDP, he should leave. If we’re doing a government of national unity, you deal with the party, not individuals. The party is what we vote for — not Bola Tinubu but APC; not Atiku but PDP; not Peter Obi but Labour Party.”

Audu’s resignation letter, dated June 8, criticised the APC’s political trajectory and warned against what he described as a deliberate silencing of opposition voices. In a follow-up statement, he clarified that while he does not support the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), he would not lend himself “as an instrument to reduce Nigeria to a one-party state.”

“If we now begin to silence or crush opposition simply because we have the upper hand, then we are no different from the very system we once criticised under Obasanjo in 2003,” he said.

Politics

VIDEO: How Peter Obi Betrayed Me – Kenneth Okonkwo In New Interview

Published

6 days ago

June 14, 2025

Editor

Veteran actor and ex-spokesperson of the Labour Party Presidential Campaign Council, Kenneth Okonkwo, has accused former presidential candidate, Peter Obi, of betrayal in the wake of internal party disputes.

In a viral interview with Symfoni which started trending on Saturday, Okonkwo, who officially exited the Labour Party in February 2025, revealed that Obi went against his advice and returned to support the embattled Julius Abure-led faction of the party, despite alleged warnings.

According to him, Obi was misled by LP executives who claimed that the Independent National Electoral Commission had recognised them.

He said, “Any politician that knows what he’s doing cannot be betrayed by another. If there is anybody that betrayed the other, I can say it emphatically that Peter Obi betrayed me.

“The Julius Abure-led LP members lied to Obi that the Independent National Electoral Commission had accepted them and Obi surreptitiously went back to them but I told him: ‘Sir, you have made a public statement on integrity and even if INEC has accepted them, that is not a criterion for you to go back and start dealing with them because they have shown that they are not democratic. If you go back to them, they will destroy your political career and everything you have said about integrity will die.’”

He said that despite privately urging Obi not to align with a group he described as “undemocratic” and “agents of the government,” Okonkwo said Obi went ahead to publicly endorse them.

“I told Obi that these people had become agents in the hands of the government to destabilise him. What they did was absolutely illegal and unconstitutional, I told him that if he went back to them, I wouldn’t join him in doing so.

“Thereafter, I called all the people that were in the inner circle and told them the same thing about what Obi was trying to do. I told them he wanted to go back with the Abure people and if he did, I wouldn’t go back with him because I do not swallow back my words.

“And after saying all those things, within like 72 hours, Obi went back to Abure’s office to publicly endorse them and while he was there talking to them, one of the leaders in that executive sent me the video to mock me that the person I was fighting for against them has come to their office to endorse them.

“It was when INEC dissociated itself from Abure that Obi came out to start acting neutral but I told him he could not be neutral and something had to be done,” he added.

The Labour Party has been embroiled in a prolonged leadership crisis, with opposing factions laying claim to the party’s national structure.

The Abure-led faction has faced allegations of financial mismanagement and anti-democratic practices, which critics say contradict the party’s reformist image.

Okonkwo, a known loyalist of Obi’s political ideology, cited these irregularities as his reason for quitting the party earlier in the year.

Watch video below:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1933867577651925202https://twitter.com/i/status/1933867577651925202

Politics

Amaechi Slams Tinubu’s Policies In Fresh Outburst

Published

1 week ago

June 12, 2025

Editor

Former Minister of Transportation and two-time governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi, has asked the coalition opposition to kick President Bola Tinubu out of office if Nigeria is to escape its deepening economic crisis.

In a no-holds-barred interview with the BBC, Amaechi, a founding member and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, lamented the country’s deteriorating condition and signalled his willingness to help forge a new opposition coalition to rescue the nation.

“People are dying. People are starving. I myself am feeling the effects of hunger,” he said, painting a grim picture of life under the current administration.

Amaechi’s statement comes in the wake of the APC’s recent endorsement of Tinubu as its sole presidential candidate for 2027, a move Amaechi openly questioned.

While reiterating his loyalty to the party, he warned that fidelity to a political platform should never come at the cost of national conscience.

“If the government is failing the country, you don’t just go along because you’re in the same party. You know that’s not right,” he stated emphatically.

Though he stopped short of confirming a 2027 presidential bid, the former minister said the option remained on the table.

“Certainly, I believe I can make a meaningful contribution,” he added, hinting that his political journey may not yet be over.

He spoke of widespread poverty, spiralling food insecurity, and daily tragedies that now dot the national landscape.

Reflecting on his years as Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, Amaechi lamented that the number of out-of-school children then pegged at 10 million, had since ballooned.

The economic hardship, he said, had also deepened insecurity.

“The Boko Haram insurgency is not just a religious crisis. Many of those involved are driven by desperation and hunger,” he asserted, linking terrorism, banditry, and kidnapping to a broader socioeconomic collapse.

Amaechi’s declaration added momentum to an emerging political realignment.

Talks were already underway among key opposition figures, including Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party and Peter Obi of the Labour Party, as they explored the possibility of a unified front against Tinubu in 2027.

Even ex-Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State and once a key Tinubu ally had signalled interest in backing an opposition alliance.

But as opposition forces stir, the ruling party continues to absorb defectors, prompting fears of Nigeria drifting toward a one-party state, a scenario Amaechi warned could undermine democracy and silence dissent.

“We’re thinking that if we come together and win the election, the country will certainly witness change,” he said, suggesting an urgent need for a credible alternative.