By Laleye Dipo
Former Deputy Governor of Niger State, Senator Zaynab Kure, as well as Dr. Shem Nuhu Zagbayi and Mr. Umar Nasko, Governorship Candidate of the PDP the 2019 Election have endorsed Mr. Tanko Beji, for a second term as Niger State Chairman of the People’s Democractic Party (PDP).
In different posts on their platforms yesterday, the trio also asked all their supporters to vote for Beji during the Saturdays’ congress.
They unanimously agreed that Beji has toiled for the party and as such deserved to be given a second term as state chairman.
Earlier stakeholders of the party in the three senatorial zones had met in Bida last weekend where they also took similar decisions.
However, the camp of one of the Chairmanship Aspirants, Mr. Mukhtar Ahmed apart from not attending the statekeholders meeting held at the party secretariat last week was also absent at the meeting held in Bida.
The Ahmed’s camp has declared every plan for the congress as illegal because the committee presiding over it was restrained by the court from holding the special stakeholders and caucus meeting last week, particularly its chairman Mr. Theophilus Dakkas Shan, the Zonal Secretary, Mr. Maurice Tsao and the Zonal Treasurer, Mr. Emmanuel Ibrahim Ijah were restrained.
The suit was filed by the trio of Abdulazeez Malami Abdullahi, Abdulmalik Garba and Mohammed Idris Goro on behalf of the group.
“With the restraining order any action taken by the Shan committee is a nullity because you cannot put something on nothing” the group said
The court papers, a copy of which is in the possession of THISDAY, was filed before Justice Binta Bawa. the vacation judge of the Niger State High Court on of July 29, 2021.
Justice Bawa, in the interlocutory order, restrained the defendants/ respondents from conducting the state caucus on July 29 or any other type of meeting at all in the name and capacity of caretaker committee or whatever called or however called on behalf of the PDP Niger state chapter.”
It also restrained the defendants/ respondents from parading themselves as caretaker committee as their tenure has expired since on the May 21, 2021, and same has not been renewed or extended by the PDP working committee.
Shan had told newsmen that his committee is not “a caretaker committee “but a body “overseeing” the affairs of the PDP Niger State and has been empowered by the national working committee to conduct the August 7 congress.
The PDP in the state has been embroiled in crisis for over a year now as a result two previous congresses that were botched.
The party is as a result of the crisis divided into two factions one led by a former member of the House of Representatives Mr. Mukhtar Ahmed and the other by the immediate past chairman of the party in the state Mr Tanko Beji.
The National leadership had tried to broker peace between the two warring groups to no avail. Even the Senator Bukola Saraki led peace and Reconciliation Committee was unable to reconcile the feuding parties “struggling for the “beautiful bride” (PDP) as described by Mr. Shan.
