PDP in disarray

THE leadership crisis rocking the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has assumed a befuddling dimension, as the party is now in disarray over the role played by some of its key members in the alleged sharing of $2.1 billion arms purchase money and how to stave off the embarrassment it has caused.
Sequel to this, there is a renewed pressure on the mem­bers of the National Working Committee (NWC) to voluntarily resign and quit the office owing to the alleged poor management of the party’s affairs. Sunday Sun reliably gathered that a group of concerned stakeholders which is seriously worried by the lingering crisis has started mo­bilizing against the current lead­ership for betraying the party. A reliable source, who pleaded anonymity, declared the NWC as a clog in the wheel of progress, maintaining that the members have lost the moral right to continue to lead the party. He said: “As a party, we cannot continue to pretend as if every­thing is well in the face of the startling revelations coming out of the ongoing investigation into the arms purchase scandal. Of course, we cannot hang anybody based on mere allegation until proven guilty by the law court. But allowing those implicated in the scandal to continue to lead the party will further worsen our situation.”
A former national vice chair­man of the party, Chief Ishola Filani, who also spoke with Sunday Sun on the matter, didn’t even mince words, saying the NWC had overstayed its wel­come. His words: “When we lost the last election, their chairman honourably resigned. The Chair­man of the Board of Trustee (BoT) also honourably resigned. One would have expected that the remaining members of the NWC to resign. But they did not.
“In any civilized country, whenever an administration fails, nobody asks the members to re­sign before they quit. Nobody is saying that they caused the fail­ure. But what we are saying now is this: The moment you fail and you knew that the circumstances for the failure were beyond you, you quit. There is no law or rule of law that says they should quit. But patriotism and dignity would have made them to say, let us give way to some other people.”
The groundswell of opposition against the NWC is coming on the heels of a subsisting court injunction that sacked the acting National Chairman, Prince Uche Secondus, as well as the arrest and continued detention of the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Olisa Metuh, by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for alleged­ly sharing in the arms money.
The loud disquiet in the party is further compounded by the recent statement by the Deputy National Publicity Secretary, Al­haji Abdulahi Jalo, asking former President Goodluck Jonathan to speak up on the arms deal scandal. Though the acting na­tional chairman has dissociated the party from Jalo’s statement, members are split on the matter.
In view of the latest develop­ment, spirited efforts are now being made by the elders of the party to find a way out of the quagmire, Sunday Sun reliably gathered.
In a desperate move to resolve the crisis, a meeting of the Board of Trustees (BOT) of the party where the issue was to be dis­cussed last Thursday could not hold. Part of the reasons was the inability of the stakeholders to reach a consensus on whether or not Jonathan should be com­pelled to speak up on Dasuki­gate. Meanwhile, clandestine meetings are still being held by various caucuses on the way to ease out the NWC and then fash­ion out the modalities to move the party forward.