PDP Appoints Ali Modu-Sherriff As New Chairman

Confusion and internal dissent brood among the members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), following the appointment of a former governor of Borno State, Ali Modu Sheriff, as the new chairman of the party.

While Governors elected on the platform of the party and members of the National Working Committee (NWC) endorsed Sheriff’s candidacy for the position, the party’s Board of Trustees (BoT), Chairmen of state chapters, senators from the South-south and Southeast – where the party has most of its senators – and members of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s cabinet have rejected Sheriff’s choice.

The Nation newspaper said the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Mr. Ibrahim Magu, claimed the agency has recovered billions of naira of stolen funds.

The National caucus meeting which started yesterday, Monday at 8pm and ended in the early hours of this morning became inconclusive, just as the meeting has continued today, with a shift of the meeting of Board of Trustees, BoT which was fixed for 10am this morning will now hold around 2am and there after, the National Executive Committee, NEC meeting which would hold at past three.

The Daily Independent newspaper said President Muhammadu Buhari has announced a two-year extension of the Presidential Amnesty Programme, which now terminates in 2017.

He confirmed that Ribadu did not show interest. We invited him to come and tell us. “After the interview process these names were reduced to two”. So, we brought the candidate at the National Caucus. “One interesting thing is that unanimously, it was the name of the same candidate that was presented to the national caucus”.

With his emergence, SAS (as the former governor is popularly called), will succeed Ahmadu Mu’azu (a former governor of Bauchi state), who resigned as National Chairman shortly after the March/April 2015 general elections which the then ruling party lost to the All Progressives Congress (APC). So, this is exactly where we are. We are anxious that some persons are not thinking of the need to move the party forward. Nigeria is the worse for it because this signals the end of the opposition in the country.