By Kolawole Ojebisi
The Acting National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Umar Damagum, has admitted that the problems besetting the party is self-inflicted, expressing optimism that the opposition party will weather the storm.
Damagum stated that the party has formulated plans to surmount its myriads of challenges, adding that part of the mechanisms is to flush out members orchestrating the crisis.
Damagum spoke in Abuja on Tuesday at the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting.
He said, “I want to also reiterate that the beauty of the PDP is that it has always had an internal mechanism to surmount whatever obstacle from anybody, even if he’s an alien, whom we know, to solve its problem,” he said.
“And this is one of them. People are outside, waiting to see whether we can surmount all these self-inflicted problems and somehow engineered from some quarters.
“But with the help of God, we continue to overcome. They will put up obstacles, and we will surmount them until we show them the way out.”
The acting national chairman said the NEC would meet thrice before the national convention, which is scheduled for the end of the year.
The NEC is the highest decision-making organ of the PDP, comprising state governors, serving and former presidents, former vice-presidents, the chairman and secretary of the board of trustees (BoT), principal officers of the national assembly, all state chairpersons, members of the national working committee (NWC), former governors, and founding members, among others.
According to section 31(4) of the PDP constitution, the NEC is required to meet every three months. However, the opposition party has not convened a NEC meeting since April 2024.
The PDP has been embroiled in crisis since 2022 leading to the fragmentation of the party into factions.
In the buildup to the 2023 general elections some governors elected on the platform of the party kicked against the zoning of the party’s presidential ticket to the North.
These governors led, by the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, (FCT) Nyesom Wike, was popularly referred to as the “G-5” because they were five in number.
The crisis exacerbated after the general elections as Wike was selected as one of the key ministers of the President Bola Tinubu administration without the ex-Rivers helmsman officially defecting to the APC.
However, barely two years to Tinubu’s reign, many members of the party, including the incumbent governor of Delta State, Sheriff Oborevwori, defected to the APC, depleting the ranks of the former ruling party.
