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A huge shocker appears to lie ahead for the nearly 20 aspirants now positioning for the chairmanship of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as Saturday Sun exclusively gathered that there might not be a convention afterall.

Rather than a convention, a very strong lobby is on to instal a caretaker committee for the party at the national level, even as some lawyers are said to have been contracted to work out the modalities and explore possible legal loopholes in both the country's constitution as well as the party's constitution which can be can advantage of to justify the imposition of a caretaker committee.

The emerging facts, Saturday Sun gathered, may have in fact, informed the uncharacteristic readiness with which the PDP leadership heeded the INEC warning that it reschedule its national convention originally billed to hold next month.

Rather than any serious desire to play by the law and give the mandatory period of notice to the Independent National Electoral Commission, the PDP agreed to shift the convention to enable it tidy alternative plans for a possible caretaker committee arrangement.

Rather than hold a convention next January, Saturday Sun gathered that the party is on the verge of yielding to immense pressure to still shelve the convention further and allow the proposed caretaker committee take over from the Dr. Ahmadu Ali-led national executive committee of the party, "put the house in order" and prepare for a freer and fairer convention to instal new leadership for the party.
Although the new proposal is still kept close to the chest of a select few, it has already sent tongues wagging, with many denying that any such plan even exists.

Contacted on the phone on Thursday, Senator Yinka Omilani, National Vice Chairman[south west] of the party, denied that the PDP was planning to put in place a caretaker committee in place of the national convention earlier scheduled for early December. ‘There is nothing like that. I’m not aware of that. As I’m speaking with you, I’m at the party national secretariat in Abuja, preparing for a meeting. As at today, the PDP has no plan for any care- taker committee”, Omilani told Saturday Sun.

But an executive member of the ousted Audu Ogbeh regime confirmed the development, saying the new plan was being considered outside the Wadata Plaza. "You should know that Wadata Plaza is only a symbolic thing. The PDP is run from outside Wadata and those there know this much. So, that they do not know about it does not mean that it does not exist".

While one group gathered that this new proposal was the brainchild of the Olusegun Obasanjo tendencies in the party, introduced to buy time and halt the current trend of edging out pro-Obasanjo politicians and increasingly reducing the former president's grip on both the party and the polity, another source told Saturday Sun that the caretaker committee proposal was being floated by a group opposed to the former president.

According to him, "from the way things were going in the run-up to the convention, none of the two camps seemed certain that it was going to succeed in hoisting its candidate. So, they needed to buy time to know how best to not only ensure that Obasanjo's candidate does not emerge chairman, but also to relatively undermine the ex-president's endorsement as chairman of the party's board of trustees.

Reacting to the latest development, a chieftain of the party who contested the party's guber ticket in Imo told Saturday Sun that a caretaker committee might infact be the way out for the party that is forever in crisis. Hear him

"When penultimate week, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced the cancellation of the PDP congress, many Nigerians were in bewilderment and wondered where the commission suddenly got its courage to challenge the PDP. Now, I am beginning to believe that INEC is acting a script that has been written which if not properly handled will snowball into crisis."

He continued: In fact, I am shocked why the party, with its retinue of lawyers, would not know the provisions of the relevant sections of the electoral act on party conventions".
According to him, the crises and killings that took place in some states where the wards congresses took place are a foretaste of what could happen if the party did not resolve its crises and went straight into a convention.

He said the fact that the PDP is still in crisis is brought to the fore by the inability of the reconciliation committee headed by former Vice President, Dr. Alex Ekwueme, to make any appreciable success of the task. "This had been a Gordian knot for the committee as all its efforts to reconcile the members hit the brick wall", he pointed out.
According to the guber aspirant, "the implication of the wrangling in the PDP portends danger for the country.

"Reports from all over the country were rife that apart from the high level violence that characterized the event, what was dubbed a congress was a charade. In Ekiti State, a senator and a serving commissioner were involved in a braw. Hell was also let loose in Lokoja, capital of Kogi State, when rival PDP groups engaged each other in a gun duel. In Imo State, the tension generated by the ill-fated outing is yet to subside.

"When place side by side the violence, the litany of complainants and outright subversion of the rules which INEC has raised, we don’t need a soothsayer to tell us that the party is doomed and like a drowning man who wants to clutch on to anything afloat, PDP is trying to make sure that it does not sink alone but will go with the country".

He concluded: "In fact, I strongly feel that the caretaker arrangement should take over the affairs of the PDP from the ward to the national level to save our democracy from unmitigated disaster. The caretaker committee while holding brief will ensure stability of the party and enthrone party discipline. The crisis that a congress will generate may capsize the ship of our nation state."

He said if the party should choose to go in the direction of a caretaker arrangement, the committee must be headed by core PDP leaders, not tainted and trustworthy. "Despite what we have experienced in the last four or so years, we still have such credible people in the party. Some of them even left when Obasanjo hijacked the party and almost turned it into a private fiefdom while others went low profile."