Wants party to woo back defected top members
Femi Folaranmi, Yenagoa
Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Reconciliation Committee and Governor of Bayelsa State, Governor Henry Seriake Dickson has insisted that the party was not the property of one person or a group of persons.
He maintained that all aggrieved members of the party must be wooed back at all cost.
“No one governor, no one lawmaker or leader of PDP can own PDP or singlehandedly produce a presidential candidate. Therefore, what is required of PDP leaders now is to work with all parties including those who have left the PDP to produce a credible candidate that is acceptable to the generality of Nigerians on the platform of PDP to defeat the APC in 2019,” he said.
Dickson who was reacting to the defection of Prof. Jerry Gana, a PDP chairmanship candidate at the last national convention, Prof. Tunde Adeniran and others to the Social Democratic Party (SDP)insisted that the PDP does not belong to one individual but to all Nigerians.
He described Gana and Adeniran as icons of democracy and leaders of progressive politics, stressing that they must be wooed back to the PDP.
Dickson in a press statement issued by his Chief Press Secretary, Francis Ottah Agbo said while the leaders of the party were important stakeholders, the real stakeholders of PDP were the ordinary Nigerians in whom sovereignty lies.
He said the rational thing for all PDP stakeholders to do was to start a process of building consensus and reaching out to players across party lines with the PDP leading the coalition to wrest power from the APC in 2019.
Dickson who pointed that the 2019 elections is crucial to the survival of democracy, assured that the reconciliation committee would continue to engage all aggrieved PDP members and save the party and Nigeria from collapse.
He stated that will be unkind to PDP leaders if they failed to lead a coalition to unseat the APC-led Federal Government, which he noted has put the nation on a precipice.