By Chuks Okocha
Governor Umaru Fintiri of Adamawa State will head the 20-Member Committee to screen aspirants from the Northern region interested in the position of National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
All the 19 states in the North including Federal Capital Territory (FCT) are expected to nominate one person each to the Fintiri Committee. These were the outcome of the Caucus meeting held behind closed doors at the Bauchi State Governor’s Lodge in Asokoro, Abuja, on Thursday night.
The National Executive Committee (NEC) of the PDP had met earlier and zoned the position of the National Chairman to the North particularly; North-central. The enlarged NEC had zeroed in on former Senate President David Mark as the best candidate to lead the party out of the woods.
But the camps of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and immediate past President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki both initially opposed to the number one party seat to the North protested that the Northern Caucus be allowed to micro zone the office by themselves.
Although the National Chairmanship position was still zoned to the North-central as it was said to swap offices with the South-south, they however suggested that any person interested in the position expressed such interest before the Fintiri Committee.
The committee is expected to recommend not more than three aspirants to the larger NEC before the National Convention billed for October 30th and 31st, 2021.
Some members of NEC were said to be zeroing in on Mark as National Chairman believed that the PDP needed a stable and consistent character to lead the party at this time.
The PDP governors led by Sokoto State Governor Aminu Tambuwal with Samuel Ortom, Governor Bala Mohammed and the Taraba State Governor, Darius Ishaku, are also of the consensus that Mark judging from his track record of stable leadership especially as President of the Senate, would bring sanity and stability to the party.
One of the PDP Southern governors said “we respect the wishes of our members from the North. Virtually all the stakeholders have agreed on Senator Mark as the preferred choice because of his consistency and pedigree.
The NEC fears that handing over the party to unpredictable persons may spell doom for the PDP in the future.
Already, Senator Ahmed Makarfi and Shehu Shema both from the North-west zone are said to have indicated interest, while Ibrahim Dankwambo and Suleiman Nazif from the North-east as well as Ibrahim Idris (Ibro) from North-central have shown interest in the chairmanship position.
The South-west will get the National Secretary and National Woman leader while the South-east will get National Publicity Secretary, National Financial Secretary and Deputy National Secretary and the South-south will get Deputy National Chairman and National Auditor.
Meanwhile, the chairman, Board of Trustees (BoT) of PDP, Senator Walid Jibrin, has cautioned stakeholders against taking rigid positions on the ongoing controversy over zoning of party offices.
Senator Jibrin, who spoke in Abuja on the sidelines of the PDP National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting, also urged members of the BoT to remain neutral in the zoning controversy.
There are two categories of BoT members prescribed by the PDP constitution. There are life members that include all past Presidents, former Vice Presidents, past Senate Presidents and their deputies; all past national secretaries of the PDP, all past governors and all former chairmen who are alive. Past and serving chairmen and secretaries of the BoT are also life members.
The PDP NEC had approved the zoning of the party chair to the North, a development that suggests that the party may zone its 2023 presidential ticket to the South.
Apparently worried by the heat generated by the zoning arrangement, the BoT chair, called on party chieftains to put the interest of the PDP above their personal ambitions.
He cautioned against personalising the zoning. “What I can say is that we should never be personal because when you want to be personal, the issue of disunity will come.
“We are not talking about zoning of the offices of the President, Vice President, Senate President, Speaker of the House of Representatives yet. Zoning can mar or destroy our party but by the grace of God, we will not allow that to happen.”
He called on members who may be aggrieved by decisions taken by NEC on zoning of party offices to explore existing conflict resolution channels in the party rather than taking their grievances to the public place.
Jibrin implored aggrieved members not to consider defection as an option, saying that what the PDP was currently experiencing is normal in any democratic setting.
“I plead stakeholders and our members across the country not to yield to the temptation to defect to any other party. What we are experiencing in PDP today is a child’s play compared to the implosion waiting to happen in the All Progressives Congress (APC).
“So please I urge you not to defect to the APC on account of what we are experiencing in PDP at present because we are going to sort out our differences amicably; the way we have always done in the past.”
Fintiri Committee adjourned till Tuesday, October 12, 2021, because of stalemate in their meeting.
