Chairman of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Board of Trustees (BoT), Tony Anenih, has said that the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM) remains a pressure group and not a political party.
Anenih who stated this on Wednesday at the meeting of the Elders and Founding Fathers of the PDM in Abuja, observed that the registration of a political party by the name PDM poses a challenge to the group’s existence.
“It is obvious that those who have `stolen’ our name to register the so-called political party do not mean well for our organisation or the PDP.
“Their aim is obviously to ride on our goodwill to attract members out of the PDP, with the purpose of weakening or even destroying the party. We have the responsibility to stop these people as we are loyal and committed members of the PDP,” Anenih said.
He alleged that those who formed the PDM as a political party wanted to undermine the electoral capability of the PDP.
Anenih condemned the registration of the PDM as a party, adding that there was no public notice before its registration, which could have enabled the movement to oppose the registration.
He stressed that the meeting would proffer creative, profound and legitimate ways of redressing the anomaly of the registration of the name PDM as a political party.
Earlier, the Chairman of the PDM, Sen. Abubakar Mahdi, said that the idea to convert the movement into a political party had always been opposed, noting that members of the movement had rejected the registration of the PDM party.
“We therefore plead with our leaders to intervene in order to find a lasting solution to the problems,” Mahdi said.
Also, Farouk Abdulazeez, who chaired the meeting, explained that the movement was a core political legacy of late Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, which could not be converted to anyone’s gains.
He gave the assurance that the current leadership of the PDM movement was determined to covet and protect the legacy by ensuring that it remains the source of political conscience of the country.
Meanwhile, Alaba Yusuf, the Media Adviser to the Chairman, PDM party, argued that the movement had been struggling to register as political party since 1989.
He said the registration of the party was borne out of the fact that there is freedom of association and freedom of speech.
“So it is free for someone to say it is an association and it is also bad for some people who belong to another party to lay claim to the PDM,” Yusuf said.