Osun State Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Sunday Bisi, has suggested that the national leaders of the party might soon wield the big stick on the excesses of the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, Nyesom Wike, whose actions he described as constituting an embarrassment to the PDP.
Bisi, who stated that it was unbecoming of someone of Wike’s calibre to be treading shabbily on the integrity of the party, assured that the party at the national level is mindful of his excesses and would curb him in no distant future.
He made this declaration on the “Frontliners” Personality Interview programme of the Osun State League of Veteran Journalists held at the Nigeria Union of Journalists Press Centre, Osogbo, on Wednesday.
Bisi argued that it was Wike’s kind of indiscipline and untoward attitude that the PDP in Osun State was trying to prevent in its prompt action against certain suspended members who had constituted themselves as a clog in the wheel of progress in the party.
Classifying recent defectors from the party into two categories, the chairman explained that there were the negligible ones who were serial decampees and the inconsequential few that are guilty of indiscipline and were sabotaging the efforts of the PDP in the state while their spirit and souls were more in the opposition than in the ruling party.
Answering questions on the reason why a former member of the party’s Board of Trustees, Shuaib Oyedokun, left the PDP, the state Chairman recalled that he left in protest because his plea that the PDP should graft Dotun Babayemi back into the party was not entertained.
Bisi, who argued that retaining some of the decampees would be injurious to the party, remarked, “Alhaji Oyedokun felt bad about our stand on Prince Babayemi, but I told him that we have to uphold discipline and Baba therefore left with him.”
Commenting on the accusations that the PDP hierarchy was taking dictation from Governor Ademola Adeleke’s dynasty on virtually all decisions that are prerogatives of the party, the chairman debunked the allegations, saying that internal democracy was prevailing in all the party’s affairs and appointments of the rank and file in both the state executives and the legislature.
“When we were aspiring, it was the Adeleke dynasty that saved the situation. In fact, none is more magnanimous than the dynasty,” he said.
He added that the dynasty had always championed the interests of the party, while it had never forced its list of candidates or appointees on the party.
The state chairman expressed optimism about the electoral fortune of the PDP in the forthcoming local government election in the state and described those nursing the hope that it would be conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission as political comedians, pointing out that unless the constitution is amended, it is the State Electoral Commission that would handle its conduct. (Guardian)
