The plan to probe President Goodluck Jonathan’s crushing defeat in last month’s presidential election by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ran into a bad patch yesterday – an indication that the bad blood generated by the outcome of the election has not dissipated.
Yesterday’s inauguration of the Ike Ekweremadu-led 15-man panel to investigate the loss and recommend the way forward was shunned by the three governors named on the team.
Governors Godswill Akpabio (Akwa Ibom), Theodore Orji (Abia) and Ibrahim Dankwabo (Gombe) did not attend the ceremony. PDP Board of Trustees Secretary Walid Jibril, the committee’s secretary, also did not turn up. They also did not give reasons for their absence. Also absent was National Chairman Adamu Mu’azu, who has been fending of attacks over the party’s loss.
National Publicity Secretary Olisa Metuh said Mu’azu was out of the country on a family commitment. He said the governors were said to be indisposed.
The party leadership on Sunday announced the committee, to review the poor performance of the PDP in the elections and make recommendations for its repositioning.
Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu, who chairs the committee, rued the party’s poor outing at the polls and appealed to members to halt the blame game.
Ekweremadu said: “Our pains and disappointments are well-founded, especially given the enormous hopes and prospects the party holds as a pan-Nigerian movement for social, economic and political transformations.
“Thus, it is not a loss for the PDP only, but a loss to the great people of this country that the party lost the steering at the time it had laid a solid foundation through the transformation agenda of the present administration.
“However, we must appreciate the fact that change is the only constant thing in life. Much as we are pained by the sad turn of events, we must come to terms with the fact that anger, recriminations, self-pity, and blame trading will not take us even an inch away from the harsh outcomes of the 2015 general elections.
“Let me emphasise that the worst tragedy that could befall the PDP is not to have lost the 2015 presidential election or our majority status at the National Assembly or some PDP controlled states to the opposition.
“All through human history, even the greatest and strongest empires have suffered one setback or the other at certain points of their existence. Instead, the greatest tragedy would be our failure to draw from the lessons embedded in the outcome of the elections.”
According to him, the party’s dwindling fortune present an opportunity to reassess and reinvent the PDP to retake its rightful place in the Nigerian polity for a much longer time.
“But we must first understand our immediate past to be able to chart our future. I believe this underscores the essence of this committee, which we have been called to serve on.
“Indeed, unless a man knows where the rain started beating him, he would never know where it stopped,” he quipped.
He pledged that the committee would be fair and just in the discharge of its assignment, without fear or favour and appealed to members to stop bickering.
“Such tendencies are not only capable of further deepening the challenges we currently face, but also wrongly portraying us as confused, frustrated, stranded and bad losers.
“We must be careful lest we play into the hands of our opponents. We also urge all our members to remain with the PDP and rest assured that we will bounce back very soon.
“I agree with the position of our national leader President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan that those who dump the PDP will return home with empty stomach. I therefore enjoin all of us to remain in our house and rebuild it instead of running to already-made shelters,” Ekweremadu admonished.
National Secretary Prof. Wale Oladipo who stood in for Mu’azu, said the party transformed the country from a near pariah state to the “largest economy” in Africa.
According to him, the PDP expanded the frontiers of freedom in the 16 years the party governed the country at the centre, adding that the party was proud of its achievements. The committee was given three weeks to submit its report.
Oladipo said the President had taken exception to the ongoing name calling and media war among the party leaders, saying the attacks and counter attacks must cease forthwith.
Among the other committee members at the inauguration are: Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives Emeka Ihedioha; Rivers State Governor-elect, Nyesom Wike; Interior Minister Abba Moro; former Ekiti chapter chairman Makanjuola Ogundipe, Alhaji Adamu Waziri and Chief Pegba Otemolu.
No comments:
Post a Comment