Text of Press Conference by the National Publicity Secretary, Prince Dayo Adeyeye, held on Friday November 24, 2017
The National Caretaker Committee has uncovered plans by some unscrupulous members of our party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to hold a parallel National Convention in December 9, 2017. This is totally uncalled for and a complete act of sabotage. Those making such plans cannot be said to be honest members of our party, the PDP. They are not patriotic but just out to destroy our party.
2. The National Caretaker Committee has been working very hard to carry all party members and supporters of the party along in all the preparations for the forthcoming National Convention holding in December 9 – 10, 2017. We are also putting our resources in place to address all the fears earlier reported by some National Chairmanship Aspirants. One of the steps taken by the leadership is to make available and in good time, the comprehensive names of all the Delegates for the National Convention to all the Aspirants before the Convention. We therefore see no reason for any honest member of this great party to want to disrupt our programmes, except they are of course working for the ruling party, the All Progressive Congress (APC).
3. We are not completely oblivious of the plans by the APC to sabotage our convention. Apart from the internal fighting within the APC, one of the reasons why the party postponed its National Convention to next year was to enable it to monitor closely our convention with a view to destabilizing our party ahead of the 2019 General Elections. The planned parallel Convention is one of those ideas of the APC to create divisions amongst members of our party. It will be most unfortunate for members of our party to allow themselves to be used against the party especially in the light of our recent painful experience.
4. The National Caretaker Committee is willing and ready to address all the concerns of our party members regarding the forthcoming National Convention. Members should take advantage of our open door policy to ventilate their opinions, concerns and grievances. We will not give room to anybody to find any excuse to sabotage the convention. We realize of course that there is little we can do to dissuade those who have decided to become paid agents of the ruling party.
5). Part of the agenda of the APC to sabotage our convention and destabilize our party is the arrest of leaders of our party on trump-up charges of corruption. We had cried out a few weeks ago that there was a list of about fifty (50) top leaders of our party earmarked by the ruling party for arrest and incarceration. The APC propagandists said we were crying wolf. Now we’re being vindicated by the continuing and unrelenting arrest, intimidation and harassment of our top leaders.
6). In the last one week, the former Governor of Taraba State, Mr. Abubakar Danladi and the former Senate President and Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Senator Anyim Pius Anyim, two prominent members of our party were arrested by the anti-graft agency, the EFCC. This is apart from the five that were earlier arrested within the month of November. We don’t know who will be next in the list.
6. These are all part of the agenda of the APC to create an atmosphere of fear and insecurity around PDP members before and after the National Convention. It is also part of the overall strategy of the ruling party to turn Nigeria into a one Party state.
7. We once again call on Nigerians and members of the international community to be vigilant to ensure that the APC does not institute full blown dictatorship in the country. The only reason why the APC is hell bent on killing the opposition in Nigeria is due to its nonperformance and inability to deliver on its campaign promises. They have failed Nigerians and they know too well that they can no longer convince Nigerians to vote for them again in 2019.
8. We want to assure members of our party nationwide that, the leadership of the party led by Senator Ahmed Makarfi, CON, will provide an enabling environment and a level playing field for all those contesting for one position or the other before and after the National Convention. We pledged to ensure a transparent, free and fair election and by the grace of God we are going to conduct the most democratic election in the history of any political party in Nigeria.
God bless the PDP! God bless Nigeria!!
Signed:
Prince Dayo Adeyeye
National Publicity Secretary
