22nd November, 2019
Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Uche Secondus will address the Nigerian media today on the outcome of the Bayelsa and Kogi governorship elections, where the party was thrashed by the ruling All Progressives Congress.
The APC also won a House of Assembly rerun in Bayelsa and its candidate, Smart Adeyemi, is at the verge of toppling PDP incumbent, Senator Dino Melaye in Kogi West.
PDP National Publicity secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan announced Secondus press conference on Thursday at the end of the meeting of the PDP National Working Committee. The PDP Board of Trustees also met on Thursday, as the party reviewed the losses in the two states.
Senator Walid Jibrin, chairman BOT said the body has recommended the setting-up of a committee to probe the actions of PDP members which made the party to lose the two states in the November 16 elections.
And that may include former President Goodluck Jonathan, who reportedly favoured the APC governor-elect David Lyon in Bayelsa.
But Ologbodiyan, speaking after the NWC meeting said the NWC did not discuss sanctioning Jonathan.
“The issue of former President Goodluck Jonathan did not come up at the meeting and it was not discussed.
“You must know about the procedure and processes in our party. If we do not have a report or an issue before us, we cannot delve into it.
“As we speak now, we do not have any matter concerning Jonathan before us in the party,” he said.
“We have taken a decision to go to court long before but beyond that, we are going to take other measures which the national chairman will disclose on Thursday.
“We have not done a post mortem of the election. We have only weighed the circumstances that surrounded the election.
“We have also looked at the global condemnation of the election. We have reviewed the role of INEC and the role played by security agencies. Formally, the party will come up with a position,” he said.
He, however, denied insinuation that Secondus was under pressure, saying the party was rather concerned about the state of democracy in the country.
“We believe that as the main opposition party, we have a responsibility to salvage democracy,” he said.
Ologbondiyan also said that there was no division within the NWC.
“All of us are here. Virtually everybody was here and we discussed freely,” he said.
Jibrin said the panel being contemplated to review what went wrong in Kogi and Bayelsa will recommend adequate punishment for members found culpable for causing the party’s losses in the two states.
He added that the probe was not on a specific individual but generally.
He also said the BoT recommended a peace committee for Edo, Lagos and Kano.
Jibrin said, “We recommended a committee that will investigate the outcome of the election in Kogi and Bayelsa.
“We are very concerned with what is happening in Nigerian politics,
especially recently in Kogi and Bayelsa.
“We reviewed the situation and condemned in totality the issue of rigging, killings and ballot box snatching that characterised this election; we reviewed the arson that took place, including the death of a Ward chair lady of PDP in Kogi. Such things must stop.
“We also viewed the accusations and counter-accusations among our members on the behaviour of some of our members both in Kogi and also in Bayelsa, especially in Bayelsa.
“We advised that we must make thorough research before we come into conclusion of who did what and suggest remedies.
“Therefore we recommended to the National Working Committee that a very serious investigation must take place”, Jibrin said.