Deputy Senate President and Secretary of the PDP Special Convention Planning Committee, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, who made the declaration yesterday while speaking with newsmen after the inauguration of his committee, said that the PDP NEC, in its wisdom, knew what was good for the party and had decided to retain Tukur in his position.
“I am not aware that Nigerians decided that our chairman would leave; it wasn’t for Nigerians to decide for PDP. The PDP would decide, whether their chairman would stay or not. So, it was an entirely party internal issue,” he said.
Giving an insight into why the party declared the positions of about 16 of its national officers vacant, the deputy Senate president noted that the action of the PDP NEC was informed by a report, of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which submitted that the emergence of the affected officers was at variance with the party guidelines.
He said: “You have to put it in proper perspective: what we are doing in PDP is to demonstrate that we are a party that is committed to rule of law. Now, the INEC made observations regarding our last convention and their observations is straight forward -they are saying that we have a guidelines that stipulated that even when you have only one candidate, for a particular position, there must be a voting for the person. Unfortunately, we took it for granted, since we had only single candidates for most of the positions, we can as well do a voice vote. So, INEC observed that it was contrary to our own guidelines.
“But they recalled that before we used the voice vote, we had voted for the Chairman and the Financial Secretary; it was the subsequent ones where we had only one candidates that we went outside our own guidelines.”
Chairman of the Special Convention Committee, Professor Jerry Jang, gave assurance that his committee would avoid the mistakes of the past. He further disclosed that nominations were open to all intending aspirants for all the offices declared vacant.
“We are doing our best, as we work towards the 20th July, which is now the confirmed date of the convention. We would have a peaceful, well-attended, credible convention. All the offices that are vacant, according to the guidelines, will be opened to all the interested members of the party.
They are there in the guidelines and we have already written to INEC, informing them that the NEC of our party has resolved to reconvene the convention on the 20th July for the national convention and the only zonal congress that has been affected is the one for the south-west which has been scheduled for 11th July.”
Culled from The Sun newspaper
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