EKITI PDP : Has Peace finally returned ? SAM NWAOKO writes on the series of moves to restore peace in the Ekiti State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as the 2014 governorship election beckons in the state. A team from the National Reconciliation Committee, set up by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and headed by the Governor of Bayelsa State, Mr. Seriake Dickson, recently left Ado Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital after a visit to the state. During the stay of the committee members, led by Ambassador Umar Damagum, they met with various stakeholders in PDP in Ekiti, as well as the state working committee of the party.Damagum, after the meetings, announced that all the warring leaders of the party had been reconciled. He said the party and its members had put the past behind them and were now focused on the future, with a view to winning the forthcoming governorship election. He stated: “This meeting is a rider to what we achieved during the various meetings that were held in Abuja, Ibadan and other places. There was a little misunderstanding in the party in Ekiti State and I am very happy that the peace we achieved in Abuja has permeated down. The party is stronger, commitment higher. We are more than resolved to reclaim the state that belongs to us. Our party has again shown it high level of maturity. We are the leading party in the state and the country at large. We have all that it takes to win elections in this state and the nation at large. ”Damagum’s submission was echoed by the PDP state chairman, Mr. Makanjuola Ogundipe. He said the steps taken by the party were satisfactory and that the underlying goal of the PDP in Ekiti was to win the governorship come 2014. Ogundipe said: “I am satisfied with the steps taken so far. The party is supreme. It is a big family and everybody concurs with the decision of the party.” But he did not stop there as he said a few things about the chances of his party as the election approaches, especially given the fact that PDP is up against a formidable candidate, Dr. Kayode Fayemi and his party, the recently-registered All Progressives Congress (APC).According to Ogundipe, “The APC is dead on arrival. It is an amalgam of different and very strange bed fellows and it is too young to stand the heat of any election, whether in the state or anywhere. Who are the APC in Ekiti State for instance? Are they not members and leaders of the Action Congress of Nigeria? They only changed their name to save their face because they have disappointed the people of the state.” On the issue of consensus candidacy that ignited the recent bouts of controversy within the party, Ogundipe said “the party would decide on the steps to take when the time comes.”The sweet talk notwithstanding, there is still a lot of work to be done among the various leaders and other stakeholders in the party as the days wear on. For instance, there is suspicion in certain quarters in the party of what a member referred to as “pampering of some members to the detriment of discipline in the party.” The suspicion and seeming dismay came against the backdrop of the violence visited on the Ekiti PDP secretariat on July 16 in which some members of the state executive of the party were injured and hospitalised. On another plane, there seems to be suspicion among the 23 or so aspirants in the party gunning for its governorship ticket. Eighteen of them, in a meeting in Ikere-Ekiti, headquarters of the Ekiti South Senatorial district, recently had, after expressing support for President Goodluck Jonathan and his ‘transformation agenda’, reiterated their call for discipline in the party. While also asserting their support for the chairman of the party, Mr Ogundipe, they were said to have maintained their stand on the consensus option for the selection of the candidate. It was also gleaned from the meeting that they allegedly agreed that anyone among them that clinches the ticket would get the support of the others in what a stakeholder referred to as “gang-up against one of them in the person of Ayo Fayose.”However, Fayose, no doubt a formidable aspirant for the ticket, had responded by saying that they were not enough yet to shake him. The former governor had advised them to join forces, put one of them forward for an electoral contest against him and see what the outcome would be. A response to that challenge is still pending and while the people are waiting, there are yet issues from which insiders in the party consider salient and disturbing. According to an insider in the party, the visit of Damagum and his team meant a lot because it was more of a ‘fact-finding than a solution-preferring’ because the issues for which the team came had earlier been resolved in Abuja during a meeting of leaders of the party in the state with Governor Dickson. The source said: “Ogundipe was told at the meeting with the Dickson committee in Abuja that among other things, the suspension placed on some members of the party should be lifted in the interest of the party and because election is not far away. What the team led by Ambasador Damagum came to do basically is to see the progress made following the Abuja meeting. The team also met with assistants and the chairmen of the 16 local government chapters of the party because the people that make up this group could not travel to Abuja for the meeting. They were also briefed on the decisions of the committee and urged to embrace peace.”However, beyond the palpable conviviality that was seen after the meeting, the party is still said to have issues of trust to deal with. It was alleged that a leader in the party had schemed for the removal of the party executive in the state headed by Ogundipe. It was further alleged that the leader had been working hand in glove with some leaders of PDP in the South-West, and that they had wielded their influence in the national secretariat of the party. The Ambassador Damagum team, it was learnt, had also sent feelers out to know if there were still part of the directives given by the Dickson committee that Ogundipe had not carried out, with a view to finding a way “to deal with him.” The sources had alleged that the plot was to sweep the Ogundipe-led executive off based on “insubordination and replace it with a caretaker committee that is loyal to the party chieftain that would ensure his total control of the party executive and structure in the state along with the executive.” The intrigues are unending and the sources said the plot in the high places in the party had kept the members in suspicion of what some of the leaders of the party were actually up to in the Ekiti chapter ahead of the governorship election. As things stand today in the party, the members are divided along pro-and anti-consensus lines. And the preponderance of opinion gleaned from the party faithful shows that the aspirants want a direction which the former governor and his staunch supporters say is not the right direction. It had even gone to the extent that one of the aspirants had suggested that they present one of them and support him or her for the primaries and test their strength against Fayose’s and settle the scores once and for all. But with the announced rapprochement, in which loyalists of Fayose also announced their readiness to work together with the other leaders of the party, it would be interesting to know how things would turn out in the coming weeks. Interestingly, the belief among the PDP members and aspirants that “when a candidate emerges, the rest would queue behind him” has persisted. The party is all over the place working at wooing the people of the state, its numerous candidates, including a new entrant, Nigeria’s former envoy to Canada, Ambassador Dare Bejide, who expressed optimism that the party would be on its feet by the election. He has also said that he and other aspirants would abide by the decisions of the party as regards how a candidate would be arrived at. The rival political parties in the state are on the field and the outcome of the polls would be dependent on, among other things, how the PDP leadership handles today’s issues in the party.
Posted on: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 05:27:30 +0000
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