PDP Crisis: Ikpeazu tasks BOT with internal resolution

BONIFACE OKORO

Abia State governor, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu, has charged the Board of Trustees (BoT) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to explore internal avenues to resolve the crises currently rocking the party and take decisions that would stabilize and put the party in good stead to win the 2023 general elections.

Ikpeazu who gave the charge when he received the members of the BoT on Wednesday, urged them to look at issues affecting the unity of the party dispassionately and “retrospectively.”

Members of the Board of Trustees (BoT) of the PDP led by her new Acting Chairman and former Senate President, Senator Adolphus Wabara, were at Ikpeazu’s Umuobiakwa country home to introduce the new leadership of the group to the Governor.

Ikpeazu told his guests that if the PDP must win the 2023 Presidential Elections, the party must dredge up sufficient courage to take decisions that would stabilize the party. The Governor has therefore pledged to assist the party’s BoT to resolve the problems confronting the party with a view to ensuring that the PDP clinches victory in 2023.

He said  there must be genuine reconciliation and truth if the party must rise above the current challenges confronting it and prayed  that the party would know the variables that have changed and respond  to them accordingly.

The Governor stressed that PDP must remain angry and hungry for power, adding that the party must correct the mistakes that made it lose election in 2015. According to him, it was better for the party not to wash its dirty linens outside, maintaining that PDP has the capacity to solve their problems internally.

To that end, he enjoined the BoT to look at the issues dispassionately and expressed the hope that the new BoT Chairman, as a career diplomat, would rise to the occasion. 

The Governor said that the BoT members have the capacity to resolve the PDP problems and assured that he would help them actualize peace in the party. He stressed on the need for PDP members across the country to pursue the 2023 elections with more vigour, saying that the members must be committed to achieving victory in the forthcoming general elections.

He assured that Abia State was a PDP State, hence there was no reason PDP would not win all the elections in the State, informing his guests the campaign slogan in the State “is 5 over 5, meaning securing victory for the Presidential, Governorship, Senatorial, House of representatives and House of Assembly candidates.”

He congratulated Senator Adolphus Wabara on his appointment as the Acting BOT Chairman of the party and said that he might have been appointed to the position this critical period because of his background and capacity to “speak the  right words at the right time.” He assured Senator Wabara that he would do everything within his powers to ensure he succeeds in his new assignment.

Earlier in his speech, the Acting BoT Chairman, Senator Wabara said he was in the State to inform the Governor officially that he was recently appointed the Acting Chairman of the PDP Board of Trustees. He said he deemed it fit to come to start his assignment from his home State. 

He informed that the BOT desires to look into the problems in PDP, hence the decision to move around to call on Governors and other stakeholders of the party with a view to ensuring victory for the party in next year’s elections, maintaining that PDP has conflict resolution mechanism with which to handle its problems.

The meeting later went into an Executive Session after which Governor Ikpeazu and Senator Wabara spoke to journalists. 

Other members of the PDP BoT who were part of the delegation are former Governors of Enugu and Kogi States, Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo and Alhaji Ibrahim Idris. Others are a former Deputy Governor of Abia State, Rt Hon Eric Acho Nwakanma, former Minister, Saminu Turaki, SAN, former National Deputy Chairman of the party, Chief Shuaibu Oyedokun, a former Minister, Hajia Zainab Maina and Dame Dr. Esther Uduehi.

A statement by Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Sir Onyebuchi Ememanka, indicated that the PDP Gubernatorial Candidate in Abia State, Professor Uche Ikonne and his running mate, Hon. Okey Igwe who is a House of Assembly Member; Hon. A. C. Thomas Nkoro, Secretary to Government, Barrister Chris Ezem, Chief of Staff to the Governor, Chief Okey Ahiwe, a former State Chairman of the PDP in the State, Chief Ndidi Okereke, were amongst others who were present at the meeting.