ENUGU, Nigeria (VOICE OF NAIJA)- Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, says his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is going through difficult moments and all is not well.
He admitted that the disagreement between the PDP presidential candidate, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, and Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, is negatively affecting their party.
Ortom revealed this in a statement issued by his media aide, Nathaniel Ikyu, yesterday, saying: “I will not say that all is well with our party.”
The Governor criticized the PDP leadership for acting rather too late to resolve the rift between Atiku and Wike.
According to him, the failure to apply the existing internal conflict resolution mechanism to resolve the rancour over the continued stay in office of Senator Iyorchia Ayu as PDP National Chairman, create problems within the opposition party.
Governor Ortom however, blamed the lingering crisis on what he called the dithering of the leadership.
The Rivers governor rejected last Thursday’s resignation of the party’s Board of Trustee (BoT) chairman, Senator Walid Jibrin, as a condition for reconciliation with Atiku and the PDP.
The PDP National Executive Committee (NEC), on 7 September, passed a confidence vote in Ayu, a move that seemed to have prevented Ayu’s resignation.
Wike however, declared the confidence vote cannot save Ayu, insisting there would be no reconciliation until the party chairman resigns.
Ortom, speaking on the crisis within the PDP leadership, which has suffered a hasty reconciliation mechanism, said one of the allies loyal to the Rivers governor, said the party waited for the crisis to aggravate before taking steps to resolve it.
The governor observed that the PDP ignored its existing internal conflict resolution mechanism, which he said, the party leaders ought to have deployed to resolve the crisis long before the situation degenerated.
He said, “There are certain internal mechanisms that should apply to conflict resolution within the party.
“Some of these instruments should have been deployed long ago.”
Ortom suggested further truce talks between the Atiku and Wike camps, adding that discussions were still ongoing among various stakeholders to resolve the crisis.
“Discussions are ongoing at different levels away from the public eye, to ensure unity and oneness of purpose in the PDP, with eyes on 2023.
“I am very interested in ensuring that we discuss. I want us to have a win-win situation so that people will feel they have been carried along.”
He noted that the camp of the Rivers State governor was still open to discussions, adding that there were substantive issues to be thrashed out within the PDP.
He expressed optimism that the PDP would “cross the Rubicon”. However, he said all was not well with the party at the moment.
He said: “I will not say that all is well with our party. The good thing is that we recognise the issues and we have generated dialogue in various ways.
“Engagement is what I have always encouraged. Everybody cannot be winning all the time.”
The governor stressed the need for the PDP to unite ahead of the 2023 election to be in good stead to defeat the APC, stating that it remained a viable alternative.
He described the performance of the ruling party, All Progressives Congress (APC) in the past seven years as “dismal and abysmal”.