SAN FRANCISCO, September 05, (THEWILL) – The Borno State chapter of the new Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Thursday said the 15 members of the Borno State Executive Council, who were members of the PDP and defected to the newly-registered All Progressives Congress (APC) on Wednesday may have done so due to the perceived insensitivity of President Goodluck Jonathan to the problems in the state.
The new PDP said they may have also taken the decision apparently afraid that the PDP, which has always played a second fiddle to the All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP) since 1999 in the state, may further lose ground to the ruling party in 2015.
Impeccable sources said authorities in Borno and Yobe States are dissatisfied that the president has spent less to nothing on the crisis which has caused heavy final burden on both states.
President Jonathan was also accused of insulting the sensibility of the people of the two states which governments have spent billions of Naira on the Boko Haram crisis with the recent donation of N4 billion to Nollywood.
Other members of the PDP in the state, who have shown solidarity with the New PDP under the leadership of Alhaji Kawu Baraje, have also indicated their preparedness to parley with other political parties if ongoing reconciliation in the party fails eventually.
Under the interim chairmanship of Comrade Sayinna Buba, the Borno New PDP, which had also passed a vote of no confidence on the current Baba Basharu-led PDP state exco, accusing it of high-handedness, said arrangement had been concluded for the inauguration of the executive council of the factional group.
Addressing newsmen shortly after a meeting of the new PDP in Maiduguri, Comrade Sayinna Buba, a chairman of the Borno state PDP field workers, who had also been nominated as the interim chairman of the New-PDP, said the new factional leadership would soon be inaugurated in the state.
According to him, the formation of the New-PDP came at a time when members of the party in the state were yearning for an end to the self-serving leadership ‘imposed’ upon them by the Minister of States for Agriculture, Alhaji Bukar Tijjani.
“Following our meeting here in Maiduguri, yesterday, I was mandated by our esteemed members to announce our support to the new-PDP faction under Alhaji Kawu Baraje.
“This is necessitated by the fact that PDP members in Borno State have suffered untold hardship and this is the apt time we’ve been waiting for to reorganise our party base on the spirit shared long ago by our founding fathers who formed this party.
“It should be noted that I and many of us in this new movement were founding members of PDP since when it was being formed under Professor Jerry Gana and we knew everything and how things went wrong. So we are hundred percent behind Kawu Baraje’s faction.
“We also thank the courageous governors who started this struggle against the mutilation of our party especially by putting a wedge against the move by Bamanga Tukur and his cohorts who are bent in killing our party. With people like Tukur on the steering, PDP’s noble plan to rule Nigeria for 60 years and take the country to greater heights can never be achieved.
“And we doubt if we are going to win the presidential election come 2015 as long as Bamanga Tukur is on seat as national chairman, “Buba, a former chairman of Jere Local Government Council, stated.
He added that the intention of forming the new-PDP in Borno state was not to factionalise the party, but rather to help in bringing back the party’s lost glory.
“Here in Borno State, we call on our esteemed members to be calm as we are going to inaugurate our new executives in the next seven days, with my humble self as chairman, while Mr Abga Barka Chiroma of Chibok Local Government serves as the state secretary.
“The leadership of the Borno State PDP under Alhaji Baba Basharu is just a photocopy of Alhaji Bamanga Tukur at the national level; and based on Article 16 of our party constitution, the current state exco of PDP in Borno State is illegal because no congress had been conducted. What happened was people were just hand-picked by the committee led by the Minister of State for Agriculture, Alhaji Bukar Tijjani, and Baba Basharu was announced as the chairman, “he said.
