In an apparent sign that its members have been compromised, the Board of Trustees (BoT) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Monday gave their embattled interim party chairman, Ali Modu Sheriff, a 2018 deadline within which to vacate office.
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After the meeting, which was co-chaired by Mantu, Adeniran, and media mogul, Raymond Dokpesi, a communique was released rejecting the decision of the party’s National Executive Committee, NEC, to extend the tenure of Sheriff to May 21, 2016.
The BoT also resolved that all the grievances within the party which are for the objective of making the party stronger should be looked into for the goal of carrying everybody along in the scheme of things.
“I know as a fact that Senator Jery Gana has written to the national chairman to allow him nominate some people into certain committees or allow them perform certain functions for the party”.
“We need to come together as a family, to fight the cancer of impunity that has eaten deep into the tissues of our party”, they said.
Some members of the board were said to have had private meetings with Sheriff and some PDP state governors in Abuja on Sunday night. At the end of it all, former Minister of the Foreign Affairs, Chief Ojo Maduekwe was elected as the new Secretary to the board, while Senator Waheed Jibril who had been acting chairman was endorsed as the substantive chairman of the body.
The former ministers are Prof.
He also said the party will review state congresses where there were crisis. Prof. Jerry Gana, who was accused of squandering N500m in the name of organising fund-raising dinners for the party in 2015, was said to have attended Monday’s BoT meeting.
“Some states had challenges in the conduct of congresses, the BoT agreed to look into that”, he said.
On his part, the House Minority Leader, Leo Ogor, said “What we have done here, as the entire caucus of the National Assembly, is making preparations towards the convention”.
Akpabio stated that: “We had a peaceful meeting here”. Certain decisions were taken and as the Minority Leader has told you, we took a lot of key decisions and one of the things we decided on is that we can not go into a national convention that is rancorous.
“Let me say very clearly that it has been a very active moment for the party and one should not be in any doubt that the BoT is a door mart rubber stamp, far be it”.
He said the BoT has working round the clock on all the problems besetting the party with a view to amicably resolving them.
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“Agreement has also been reached on states where congresses had become contentious”.
