Strong indications have emerged that the controversy over elective position in the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP, might have resulted into the postponement of the presidential declaration by President Goodluck Jonathan. The declaration which was earlier scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday has been reportedly extended for one week.
This was made known to LEADERSHIP last night by a member of the Media and Publicity sub-committee of the Presidential Declaration Committee, headed by Dr Bello Haliru, who said, “Under the circumstances the party finds itself today, I think a one-week postponement is being considered for presentation to Mr. President.” He asserted that barring any change in plans, the postponement may be announced today.
However, it was gathered that the postponement is yet to be discussed by the committee, the president and the PDP national leadership.
Checks revealed that all arrangements geared towards a successful declaration had been firmed up with hotel reservations for dignitaries from outside Abuja made a week ago. Yet, the source maintained that owing to the internal wrangling within the party, especially as issues of party tickets were yet to be resolved, the committee had been making efforts to ‘bring on board’ all stakeholders to reach a consensus on the planned postponement of the declaration.
Hear him, “You know the issues that have come up within the party in the last three weeks or so; we have seen the various dimensions the issue of senatorial tickets as well as the governorship tickets in most of our states have taken so far.
“As a party, we want to go into the declaration as one united family with minimal dissenting voices or cleavages within us in the PDP. For instance, we know there are some governors who, though members of the Presidential Committee, appear to be angered by the reported deal between the president and the senators; yet there are some senators who are also not too happy that some governors are working against them.
“So under such confusion, the best thing to do is to consider the possibility of postponing the event in order to bring all stakeholders to the table for us to move forward. This is very important because if you look at the entire scenario, more than half of the states controlled by PDP are affected one way or the other, and we are already making efforts to convince the president to shift the programme to a later date, possibly by one week,” he noted.
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