Pressure within the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is mounting on the acting National Chairman of the party, Prince Uche Secondus, to revert to his position as the deputy chairman of the party, Punch reports.
Towards this end, a group known as PDP Restart Project, has also called on the Secondus-led National Working Committee of the party to put machinery in motion for the meeting of the party’s National Executive Committee.
A member of the group, Alhaji Suleiman Bello, stated in Abuja on Sunday that the NWC was wrong to have stated there was no vacancy in the office of the national chairman of the party.
He stated his group was already discussing with those he described as “like-minds within the party” on the need to allow the North-East fill the vacuum created following the untimely resignation of the erstwhile National Chairman of the party, Alhaji Adamu Mu’azu.
Mu’azu, a former governor of Bauchi State, filled the vacuum created with the resignation of Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, who also quit following pressure from some governors and members of the party’s NEC.
Bello, who is a former member of the Bauchi State House of Assembly, stated that removing Secondus would make the people of the North to have confidence in the party.
He said, “A lot of consultations are ongoing to rebuild the party and also to see what happened during the 2015 general election.
“Members of the party across the country must disregard the NWC on substantive chairman. The PDP NWC must call a NEC meeting, they are behaving like sole administrators. They need to know that the party is greater than any individual.
“The North-East must produce the chairman and such a chairman must complete the tenure of the former chairman. That is the only way to restore peace into the party. “
As stated by him, doing this will make the party’s leadership, including the Board of Trustees, National Caucus, Governors’ Forum and others sit together and analyse what went wrong that made the party to lose the last elections.
He stated although a former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Mallam Bala Mohammed, has shown interest in leading the party, the aspiration of the former senator was not absolute.
But he stated the party would gain from his experience having been a senator and a member of the defunct All Nigeria Peoples Party before he defected to the PDP.
Bello said, “The party’s constitution says Secondus should be there for just three months and he has to leave now. The period of impunity should end and we need somebody who has the knowledge of ruling and opposition party politics.”
It is not yet clear if the plan to sack the NWC has gained the support of the party’s governors.