…backs G5 govs on Ayu
Afenifere, the p a n -Yo ruba socio-political group, yesterday, threw its weight behind the five governors of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who are opposed to the presidential ambition of Alhaji Atiku Abubarkar. The group blamed the crisis rocking the PDP on the violation of the party’s constitution and the recommendations of the 2014 national conference on rotation of power between northern and southern states of the country.
The Secretary-General of the mainstream Yoruba organisation, Chief Sola Ebiseeni, in a statement said the position of the five PDP governors opposed to former Vice President Atiku Abubarkar’s presidency led by Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, is supported by Afenifere, which was of the belief that power should come to the south after a northerner, President Muhammadu Buhari, has completed an eight-year tenure.
Ebiseeni, who was justifying the presence of Afenifere at the South West rally of the candidate of Labour Party (LP), Mr Peter Obi, said the constitution of the PDP was violated with the choice of Atiku Abubarkar as the presidential candidate of the PDP. According to him, it was difficult for members of the Afenifere in good conscience and the peace of our nation to support the ill-advised choice of the PDP presidential candidate on account of his region of origin.
Ebiseeni said it is sheer hypocrisy that politicians who cannot compromise zoning of their states’ Houses of Assembly, National Assembly and gubernatorial positions would in anger openly sabotage their parties during elections and shamelessly turn their backs to the equity they preached when it comes to the most important office and expect peace in the federation.
His words: “The PDP was birthed in the legacy of national healing and consensus, enthroning regional and geopolitical zoning of the office of the president as the harbinger of peace and progress. “Notwithstanding, its loss of power in 2015, it is being looked upon as the general purpose vehicle for national redemption so much that those who transgressed against it were soon forgiven and welcomed with open arms without loss of precedence and honour.
“The party, however, bit the forbidden fruit the moment it deceived itself that the centre could hold while destroying the foundational covenant. We hold it evidently true in nature that in the current conflict between the PDP on one hand and righteousness, truth and justice on the other, the result is a foregone conclusion. “At the 2014 National Conference the Committee on Political Parties and Election of which I was member as a delegate, Iyorchia Ayu and Ken Nnamani, both former presidents of the Nigerian Senate, were co- chairmen.
The present national chairman of the PDP was, therefore, a prominent delegate to the CONFAB which resolved and recommended that the Office of the President of the Federal Republic be zoned on North-South regional and geopolitical basis, to allay fears of political domination.
“In fairness to Ayu, the position of the national chairman is what belongs to him as of right of the convention of the party and which he got by consensus. However, before his inauguration on the 31st of October 2021, he had already granted interview suggesting the emergence of a northern presidential candidate and that he would resign in that eventuality, a promise now his albatross.
“The just call by the Integrity Group led by Governor Nyesom Wike and his colleagues and reasoned with by well-meaning party members and other Nigerians is a mere parable against the decision of the PDP, seeking iniquitously that power should remain in the North after eight years of its presidency through Muhammadu Buhari. “The nation earnestly awaits the full expression of the integrity in the righteous league with the Southern and Middle Belt Leaders Forum and the APC group led by Babachir Lawal. Ayu or the national chairman of any political party is not the issue in the quest for inclusiveness and justice.
It is the office of the president. “However, the statuses of ‘unifier and bridge-builder’, which are falsely ascribed to the ticket of the PDP, most befittingly belong to the Peter Obi and Datti Ahmed combination. It is the only arrangement in the present dispensation, which justly answers all questions of regional and faith equities with leaders we do not have to hold our breadths in engagements in the comity of nations. “The generation that fought the Nigerian civil war was reconciliatory enough to elect an Igbo as vice president only nine years after, by 1979. It is only proper that we heal our minds and land of the vestiges of the war and live in peace. Igbo lokan.”
