Against 2019: PDP BoT woos founding fathers

The Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party has said it is ready to work with the founding fathers of the party to enable it to return to power in 2019.

It said towards this, it would initiate moves aimed at reaching out to them in January 2016...


Also, the advisory body of the former ruling party hailed the fight against corruption by President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, but cautioned the President against any act of selective justice in the quest to rid the nation of corruption.

The BoT , after its meeting in Abuja on Friday, said that it resolved that a larger meeting of BoT be convened on January 14, 2016 to elect a substantive chairman of the board, who will take over from the former Minister of Defence, Alhaji Haliru Bello, who is holding sway in an acting capacity.

Briefing journalists after the meeting, the Secretary of the Board, Sen. Walid Jubrin, noted that “as the conscience of the party, we are trying to dialogue with the aggrieved people.

“We are ready to dialogue with the founding fathers of this party, immediately after our meeting on January 14, 2016 and having come with a new chairman, we are going round this nation.

“We are going first to discuss with our founding fathers, all those who are within and those who have left this party and try to lure them and bring them back to the party because we have all the opportunities now to win again all the elections up to 2019.

“And so we will not play with any member of the party, and we want all party members to be cooperative with all organs of the party, we are a special organ of the party, we are the conscience of this party.

“ If we do not come out and do something now, God will not even forgive us, we must come out and tell the truth and look at the matters as they are; whoever erred, we must bring him to book, we must advise well.

“Ours is advisory but we are given specific functions to do when there is a situation of this nature. We want to be fair to all, so that on January 14, we will gather and do the right thing and will fear nobody, whoever erred, it is our duty to say the truth”.

He said, “I don’t believe the party is in a shambles, the party is alive and kicking very well. We have many aggrieved people in the party and people who have left this party because of one reason or the other.”

He applauded the effort of the Buhari government in the fight against corruption, saying “we in the PDP do not support corruption, whoever erred in corruption in Nigeria should be dealt with, but we don’t want selective justice.”

Jubril maintained that though the BoT has not penciled down anybody to emerge as substantive chairman, he added that if the current acting chairman, Bello shows interest, he could contest.

“The procedure of electing a new chairman will be discussed on January 14. If Bello wants to contest, he is so much welcome to contest”, he added.