Aggrieved stakeholders in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have intensified the plot to unseat the party’s National Chairman, Adamu Mu’azu and members of the National Working Committee (NWC).
Spurces said that the game plan was to ensure that Mu’azu and other party leaders who were being blamed for PDP’s routing in the just-concluded general elections were sacked before May 29.
Mu’azu is expected to call for the meeting of the National Executive Council (NEC) of the party between now and May 15 and the NWC members will be asked to resign, a source told our corespondent.
The source said if Mu’azu failed to call for the NEC meeting, he would be forced to do so as soon as possible.
In fact, multiple sources in the party confided in our correspondent that President Goodluck Jonathan and some influential members of the party’s Board of Trustees (BoT) had agreed on the need to sack the Mu’azuled NWC.
“There is no way the current NWC members will continue to pilot the affairs of the party, given their failure at the last general elections.
“We can only allow them to continue if only we want to kill the PDP. I can assure you that the Mu’azu-led executives will be dissolved in May,” a member of the PDP BoT said on Monday.
It was further learnt that some PDP governors and BoT members were pushing for the exit of the NWC before May 29, insisting that “Mu’azu and other NWC members have to go before May 29 when the Jonathan administration ends. If we allow Mu’azu to stay beyond May 29, it will be difficult to push him out as national chairman.
“So, we will definitely meet and ask them to resign. They have failed the party,” a party leader said.
A former Minister of Transport and member of BoT, Chief Ebenezer Babatope, also agreed that PDP needs to be rebuilt. “We have to reorganise the PDP for future elections. Now, we won’t create anarchy in the party by dissolving the NWC abruptly. But eventually, the Mu’azu-led executives have to go. We need young and experienced hands to reorganise our party,” Babatope said.
The PDP had, last week, taken steps to starve off likely crisis that may follow its poor performance in this year’s general elections.
The poor outing of the party is generating discontent among members with some defecting almost immediately to the APC while others who remained want mass purging of members of the NWC to be replaced by people with caretaker committee to run the affairs of the party till the next national convention.
They accused the NWC members of not being committed to the success of the party during the elections. Some were also said to be moles that worked against PDP candidates in their states.
A source at the PDP National Secretariat said that some top politicians in the North, including the governors, worked against the party, adding that “They were afraid to campaign for the PDP presidential candidate in their states.
“That is bad. How can you tell me that the party cannot get 25 per cent vote in most states in the North? Most NWC members did not do their job and they have no business remaining in office. We need fresh ideas, people who will be committed and work to return PDP to winning ways. And it must be now before the president leaves office.”
Some of those pushing for the exit of Mu’azu stated that apart from his non-committal to the party during the electioneering, he abandoned the party to travel outside the country at the critical period.
Mu’azu was said to be in Dubai during the presidential election. But the Chief Press Secretary to the PDP national chairman, Tony Amadi, who spoke in a telephone interview, said his principal travelled out because he took his sick mother to Dubai, but he was back before the presidential election.
“The president even said it during the rally in Damaturu, the Yobe State capital. It was when the campaign train went to pay the traditional homage to the Emir of Damaturu when he asked after the chairman. President Jonathan told him that he took his mother for treatment to Dubai,” Amadi stated.
PDP National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, said no change could take place in the party until 2016.
Metuh, however, stated that he would voluntary resign if there was any need to do so. “If at any point, my being National Publicity Secretary will be a cog in the wheel of progress in the party, I will quit. People, who feel they have better hands, maybe they can come and take over and run it.
“But I will plead that when those people come, they should be given free hand and given all necessary logistics for them to achieve result,” he said.
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