• Endorses tenure extension for Sheriff

From Oluseye Ojo, Ibadan

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the South West yesterday reached a consensus to allow the North retain the chairmanship of the party.

At a meeting in Ibadan, Oyo State, attended by national, zonal,

state leaders of the party and elected public officers, the South West

PDP stakeholders endorsed former governor of Borno State, Senator Ali

Modu Sheriff as national chairman of the party.

The PDP zonal chairman, Makanjuola Ogundipe, in his address,

said the South West could not produce the national chairman for the party

due to lack of cooperation in the zone, a development he reasoned would

constitute a challenge to the national chairman from the region.

He explained that 70 per cent of the functional leaders of the zone arrived

at the decision to allow the North retain the position of national chairman of the party.

“We, the people of the South West, are good at petition-writing and pull him down (PHD) tactics. Too much enegy will be dissipated on acrimony

and conflict resolution.

“It is unfair to the masses of the South West for anyone to insinuate

that our position in canvassing that the national chairman of the party

should come from the North amounts to pushing away good things coming

to the region. That is a political game that I do not subscribe to.
The position of the national chairman without the requisite resources and enabling environment cannot be said to be a good thing,” he noted.

In the same vein, the chairman, Organisation and Mobilisation

Committee, PDP, South West, Senator Buruji Kashamu, representing Ogun East senatorial district in the National Assembly, advised the Acting

Chairman, PDP Board of Trustees (BoT), Senator Jubrin Walid, and a

BoT member from Osun State, Chief Ebenezer Babatope, to canvass their

positions on the chairmanship of the party without abusing other members

that do not agree with them.

He told Walid that PDP members that did not agree with them that Sheriff

should quit the office latest by May 21, this year, should be seen as realists and lovers of the party, not ‘praise singers.’ “On the comments by one of our foremost leaders in the South West PDP, Chief Ebenezer Babatope, that I want to ‘bully South West leaders…because I came into emergency money’, the fact is that leadership is earned and it comes with responsibilities.”

Chieftains of the party that attended the meeting included

National Secretary, Prof. Wale Oladipo; National Publicity Secretary,

Chief Olisa Metuh; National Auditor, Adewole Adeyanju; former National

deputy chairman of the party, Alhaji Shuaib Oyedokun; South West Zonal chairman, Makanjuola Ogundipe, and the zonal secretary, Prof Olawale Bimbo.

Others were PDP state chairmen, Tunji Shelle (Lagos); Bayo Dayo

(Ogun); Yinka Taiwo (Oyo); Ganiyu Olaoluwa (Osun); Idowu Faleye (Ekiti)

and delegation from Ondo State.