The National Working Committee (NWC) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has mobilised Governors Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto State and Godwin Obaseki of Edo State and the party’s reconciliation committee headed by a former President of the Senate, Dr. Bukola Saraki, to persuade the Governor of Cross River State, Prof. Ben Ayade, to rethink plans to defect from the main opposition party to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). Source learnt that the move followed the threat by 18 elected local government chairmen and 196 councillors in the state to defect from the PDP if the party fails to repeat its state congress.
The chairmen and councillors yesterday met with members of the NWC in Abuja during which they served the defection threat.
The delegation, led by the Chairman of Akpabuyo Local Government Area, Hon. Emmanuel Bassey, in a petition handed over to the party’s Deputy National Secretary, Dr. Emmanuel Agbo, called for immediate conduct of transparent congresses at all levels in the state.
THISDAY amassed that inside the final congress carried out with the aid of the PDP inside the kingdom, Ayade lost control of the structures to contributors of the celebration in the National Assembly.
The governor’s loss of political structures in any respect tiers to a faction that sponsored Hon. Agoms Jarigbe within the senatorial number one that pitted him against Senator Steve Odeh, backed via the faction dependable to the governor.
Odeh, it was collected, changed into subsidized by means of the governor to update the past due Senator Rose Okoh who died ultimate year.
It changed into alleged that Odeh reached a address the governor to spend handiest one time period as a senator to enable Ayade to go back to the Senate, in which he turned into till 2015.
However, the calculation failed as Jarigbe, a serving member of the House of Representatives refused to stay inside the House.
At the primary, PDP back Odeh as the senatorial candidate, but Jarigbe rejected the final results and went to court docket and his appeals have been upheld.
The development caused the threat of defection by using the governor and his faction, which boycotted the zonal congress of the birthday celebration held recently in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, in which Chief Dan Orbih became elected because the South-south National Vice Chairman.
The governor also boycotted the PDP governors’ assembly at the weekend in Makurdi, Benue State.
It was due to the danger by means of the governor to defect to the APC that the elected neighborhood government chairmen and councillors met with Agbo the previous day to present their petition for a brand new congress to confer respect on the governor as the chief of the birthday celebration or they would disorder.
Chairman of the Calabar Municipal Council, Hon. Effiong Eke, told reporters after the meeting with the birthday celebration that they demanded a clean state congress to assure the return of party systems to the governor.
He stated: “The governor is the leader of the birthday celebration in the country. He should accept control of the birthday party systems and this could handiest be executed with a clean congress.
“We are traumatic a sparkling congress. If not, in which the Governor, Prof. Ben Ayade, goes, we can go together with him. He is the leader of the birthday party within the kingdom.”
Also, the leader of the delegation, Hon. Emmanuel Bassey, who's also the Chairman of Cross Rivers State Local Government Chairmen Forum, stated: “We are chairmen of the 18 local authorities councils in Cross River State. We came to satisfy the countrywide chairman and we've got met him, and he become ably represented by way of the Deputy National Secretary in the character of Dr. Emmanuel Agbo.
“We got here for the motive of our state; the country of affair of the birthday party in our country; we met him and we supplied to him what we came with and he has honourably looked after it and has confident us that he is going to ensure that what we supplied to the party and what we came with, might be given instantaneous and pressing attention.”
When he become requested to reveal the content of the petition presented, he stated: “You men have to have recognised that the state congress has no longer been held, and we did ask that or not it's carried out urgently. And he has confident us that in order to be taken into consideration urgently.
“For God’s sake, Prof. Ben Ayade is the birthday celebration chief in Cross River State; he is the only that leads, much like each different governor in any PDP kingdom. So, allow us to supply him his due recognize. Let it be given to him.
Whatever equation he have to have taken, I suppose is to a exceptional volume it is for the goodness and betterment of the celebration.
“Let me state right here categorically that we are the pillars of the birthday party in Cross River State and those pillars were erected via Prof. Ben Ayade; so, if he is going, we go together with him.”
But a supply instructed THISDAY that the NWC become working to stave off Ayade’s deliberate defection by mobilising Tambuwal, Obaseki and the Saraki-led committee to make certain a non violent resolution of the disaster.
“The PDP’s pinnacle hierarchy has moved to clear up the problem. Some governors which might be close to Prof. Ben Ayade have been contacted. The Saraki-led reconciliation committee has been contacted and before the weekend, we're sure of top information,” the supply stated.
The party had in advance despatched Bauchi State Governor, Senator Bala Mohammed, to mediate inside the crisis inside the Cross River State bankruptcy of the birthday party, following speculations that Ayade changed into making plans to sign up for the APC.
Receiving Mohammed in his office in Calabar, Ayade had said the PDP beneath his watch scored the very best returns in elections, adding that he turned into now not moved by means of the disagreement with celebration stakeholders.
He stated: “I recognize you are any person that doesn’t take injustice. One single injustice they may see a new Cross River State…and I say it as a warning because it does seems that your celebration appears to rejoice those who threaten and strain them.
“All councillors in the country are PDP; council chairmen are PDP; all House of Assembly participants are PDP, all commissioners are PDP, and all of the National Assembly individuals, except one, are PDP: all of them are underneath my management.
“I am happy you've got created an opportunity for a melodrama. So nowadays I am seated and dancing at the fence. Indeed that’s actual.
“And so I speak with righteous anger for the continuous annoyance and nuisance orchestrated on our harmless through outside elements. But I just wish this ends nowadays.
“And so please as I go away you with some holy whispers, on the way to be very strong, corporation and clean, it’s a harbinger of hassle.
“While I trust in ecclesiastics of peace, I believe in the catechism of precise religion but I also consider in respect for the supremacy of an workplace.
“I assume the time has come when everyone will acquire and say enough is sufficient.”
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