Unless the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Prince Uche Secondus, wades into the crisis rocking the party in Borno State, it may suffer defeat in the 2019 general elections.
A former secretary of the main opposition party in the state, Alhaji Usman Mahdi Badeiri, told Daily Trust in Maiduguri that a protracted crisis that fragmented the party into two main factions had incapacitated it for any victorious electoral contests in the state.
He alleged that the seed of the fractionalization of the party was sown by the former National Caretaker Committee Chairman of the party, Senator Ahmed Makarfi, who endorsed what he described as “a fraudulently-elected state executive council of the party in contravention of the party constitution.”
According to him, “As a major stakeholder in the operation of the party in the state, it has become imperative for me to call on our revered National Chairman, Prince Secondus, to rescue the party out of this crisis to forestall its defeat in the hands of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2019 elections.”
The crisis, Usman Badeiri, alleged, was caused by Senator Makarfi’s endorsement of the election of the Zanna Gaddama-led executive council, elected “not in Maiduguri or anywhere in Borno State, but in Gombe, Gombe State.” He argued that, “it is against the PDP constitution and also against the electoral laws of the party to conduct an election into party offices for a state in another state.”
He exonerated the ruling APC from the troubles of the PDP, stressing that, “APC has no hand whatsoever in our problem here; it is the fault of Senator Makarfi who would not heed the advice of the Board of Trustees of the PDP in the state, comprising Alhaji Ibrahim Bunu, Senator Sanusi Daggash, Engr. Mohammed Abba Gana and Hajiya Inna Ciroma, against endorsing the Gaddama-led executive council.”
