From Wole Balogun, Ado-Ekiti
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ekiti State has described the meeting held in Abuja yesterday, by 23 State Chairmen of the party as a mere gathering of strange people parading themselves as state chairmen of the PDP on the strength of their appointment by Senator Ali Modu Sheriff.
The party said: “No genuine state chairman of the PDP will associate with Senator Ali Modu Sherriff, considering the damage he has done to the party, except those he handpicked to buy legitimacy for himself.”
In a statement issued in Ado Ekiti yesterday by state publicity secretary of the party, Mr. Jackson Adebayo, the party said; “There are laid down procedures for officers of the party, from ward, local council, state to national levels to emerge and those who were paraded in Abuja yesterday should show proof of where and how they were elected to Nigerians.”
The statement read in part: “Our attention has been drawn to a meeting purportedly held in Abuja yesterday by some people who paraded themselves as state chairmen of the PDP and we in Ekiti State wish to dissociate ourselves from such meeting.
“From our findings, majority of the so-called state chairmen were people appointed by Senator Sheriff and not those duly elected at the party congresses prior to May 21, 2016. “The way Senator Sheriff single-handedly constituted the National Working Committee (NWC) of his faction of the PDP by appointing people into positions that can only be filled through the National Convention was the way he appointed people into excos of some states.
“For the avoidance of doubt, Nigerians, especially the media should endeavour to ask those being paraded as NWC members as well as state chairmen by Senator Sheriff how, when and where they were elected.”
The PDP in Ekiti State maintained that Senator Sheriff was an impostor being used by the All Progressives Congress (APC) to sustain the party’s quest for a one-party state in Nigeria, adding that; “If Sheriff is not an agent of the APC, let him show one statement that he made against the APC led federal government.
The party maintained that Senator Sheriff and his cohorts’ receipt of $1 million from the APC to organise a convention and the open support of the group by some elements in the APC is enough to show where they belong.