National chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur says echoes of disagreements in Nigeria are being caused by by the nature of the nation’s sharing formular.
Tukur spoke in Enugu on Saturday during a town hall meeting organized by the South-East zone of the party. The meeting was part of the party’s reform and reconciliation process.
He said for peace to be guaranteed education and youth empowerment should be taken seriously by the government.
Governor Sullivan Chime of Enugu State, and his Ebonyi state counterpart, Governor Martin Elechi, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, former national chairman of the party, Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo were among major stakeholders from the zone who were present at the meeting.
Senator Uche Chukwumerije , Senator Ayogu Eze and other National Assembly members from the zone also attended the meeting. Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator Anyim Pius Anyim were conspicuously absent at the event held at the Nike Lake Resort, Enugu.
The party chairman who adopted a preaching tone in his speech to the members in attendance said Nigeria was so greatly endowed by God. He added that what was needed urgently was a peaceful environment, unity, commitment and loyalty to the country.
“God is so kind to Nigeria; God has given us all we need as a nation; what we need is a starting point. We need to empower people with education.
“God has given us opportunity, what we need in our environment is to educate our people to translate our resources for our benefit.
“We can develop the endowment of our environment but what we need most is a peaceful environment, first to reconcile ourselves, we should forget about yesterday and think of today and tomorrow”.
Continuing, Tukur said “Let us build our party on equity and justice. If we do that we will have electricity and all our yearnings. We should not engage in negative practices.
“All the disagreements came because of sharing of resources; if we agree to have a better sharing formular, the disagreements will be less; that’s what the party wants to do, we should agree on how to create wealth”.
In his speech, the National Vice Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, South-East, Col .Austin Akobundu (RTD) restated that the crisis in the South East Zone was actually not insolvable.
According to him, Anambra State would be the test case of their reconciliation endeavours, adding that as time approaches for the primaries and governor ship elections in the state, “ we have initiated various stakeholder consultations to ensure that all outstanding issues including ongoing court litigations are resolved on time”.
Akobundu said he was happy to report that for the first time that stakeholders in Anambra state were coming together to find a permanent solution to the crisis, adding that to sustain the move and keep an eye on the ball, it was imperative that the National Working Committee continue to believe in the leadership, hoping that they are capable of resolving the Anambra crisis.
On Imo State, he said the good news was that Imo people had remained strong PDP supporters despite electing an opposition governor by error. Most of the speakers at the forum demanded that the party should agitate for the immediate creation of additional states for the South-East zone, as well as full integration of the Akanu Ibiam Airport, Enugu into an international airport.
Comments