Crisis in PDP deepens as BoT fails to reconcile Wike, Atiku

The crisis rocking the Peoples Democratic Party may have deepened as the party’s Board of Trustees failed to resolve the feud between its presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar and Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike.

This came as the BoT, at a meeting it summoned in Abuja on Wednesday, rejected the demand by Wike’s supporters’ that the National Chairman of the party, Iyorchia Ayu must resign for peace to reign.

At the end of the meeting it was clear that the reconciliation move brokered by Senator Walid Jibrin-led BoT was not able to achieve any meaningful result due to lack of compromise between the two camps.

According to Wike’s camp, Ayu should be a man of integrity and keep to his vow to resign his promise if a northerner is elected as the presidential candidate of the party.

They said it was wrong for both the presidential flag bearer and the national chairman of the PDP to come from the same region.

However, it was learnt from a source close to the BoT that the board dismissed the demand as unrealistic, adding that it can only be met if Atiku wins next year’s election.

Since Atiku, after emerging PDP presidential candidate, picked Delta State Governor Ifeanyi Okowa as his running mate ahead of Wike, the PDP has known peace.

Wike, who came second and his supporters, are not happy that Atiku ditched a recommendation of the party committee, which recommended Wike for the vice presidential candidate, to select Okowa as his running mate.

But Atiku keep insisting that he picked Okowa from among the options presented to him.

As a result of this rift, the BoT summoned the Wednesday meeting held at the Abuja PDP national secretariat.

At the end, a committee was set up to reconcile the warring chieftains.

According to Jibrin, all members of the BoT are members of the committee.

Party stakeholders were said to have agreed that the Deputy National Chairman (South) will replace Ayu, who is from the Northcentral zone.

Wike’s supporters did not attend yesterday’s meeting.

A few of them who attended were said to have drawn the attention of the meeting to the fact that the presidential ticket and two key leadership positions are being held by the North.

“The presidential ticket holder, the national chairman and BoT chairman are all from the North.

“Atiku is from North-East, Ayu is from North-Central and the BoT chair is also from Northcentral,” one of them said.

Senator Abdul Ningi told reporters that the rift between Atiku and Wike remained unresolved.

He said: “We discussed the crisis between our presidential candidate and Wike. In getting it resolved, we set up a committee of the whole to urgently interface with the two of them.”