PDP CRISIS: Dickson’s peace plan evil, selfish, Makarfi submits

How the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will survive the cankerworm which has continued to eat it up prior and after the 2015 presidential election, when it lost its 16-year reign as Nigeria’s ruling party, is left to be seen.

This is as its Caretaker Committee chairman, Senator Ahmed Makarfi, has smelled evil in the Bayelsa State Governor Seriake Dickson’s proposal, describing as an agenda not good for the party.

Dickson’s led standing Committee on Reconciliation of the PDP recently submitted a peace plan intended to bring a lasting solution to the leadership crisis rocking the party.

Part of the plan includes a national convention slated to tentatively hold on June 30 and to be presided over by the party’s national chairman, Sen Ali Modu Sheriff.

However, Makarfi in his reaction has branded the submission as selfish and inimical to the party.

Makarfi stated this in Kaduna at the weekend when he visited the secretariat of the State Correspondents chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) which was gutted by fire last week.

He said, “Just a week before Governor Dickson submitted his report to Modu Sheriff, the 11 PDP governors including himself; met with former President Goodluck Jonathan and came out with a unanimous proposal on the way out of the crisis in the party. Then, he (Dickson) pulled out and made a proposal, which he presented to Modu Sheriff.

“Well, for us, the issues in the PDP are not just about conducting convention, they are fundamental. How do you go for convention if you don’t address these fundamental issues and achieve reconciliation? You have not talked about the problems, you have not sorted them out and you are more concerned about a committee to organise convention. That means you will go and do convention while the crisis is still on.

“Governor Dickson was at the meeting of the governors and the former President where they came out with a unanimous proposal, so, how can he pull himself out a week after and make his own proposal? If he had anything contrary to what they agreed on, why didn’t he suggest it at that meeting? It didn’t make sense. Of 11 governors, you pulled yourself out and you made a separate proposal and presented to Modu Sheriff.

Read also: Hope for PDP as reconciliation committee draws peace plan, supports Sheriff to convene nat’l convention

“The proposal by the former President and the 11 governors was presented to us, to the BOT Chairman and to Modu Sheriff. If anything is going to change, they should go back to former President Jonathan and the other governors to discuss and review the responses from us, from BOT, from Modu Sheriff,” he said.

He further stated that Dickson spoke with him informally and informed him he was bringing his proposal, but that he neither saw him nor the proposal.

He added “He (Dickson) called the former President and they were to meet on Wednesday, then he also called the BOT Chairman, who gave him appointment for Wednesday, only for him to go and submit his proposal to Modu Sheriff to go ahead and conduct the convention. And that is what Sheriff has been looking for. Now, he got somebody asking him to go ahead and conduct convention.
“So, what is Governor Dickson up to? I don’t know, but it is definitely an agenda not good for the PDP. His proposal is even a breach of the Court of Appeal judgment, because he is suggesting going for convention in June. Court of Appeal said you cannot hold convention until August this year based on the tenure it recognised”, Makarfi asserted.

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