By Derrick Bangura

In addition to forming a 37-man committee to determine the zoning of its presidential ticket, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has gone a step further by revealing details of how the presidential candidate will be chosen without waiting for the committee’s decision.

In another vein, the party has formed a three-man committee, led by Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State, to mediate the party’s divisions in Edo State.

The Delta State Governor, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, and his Bauchi State counterpart, Senator Bala Mohammed, are also members of the Committee.
But many of the party chieftains had started wondering why the PDP released details of how its presidential candidate would emerge, without waiting for the report of the committee it earlier set up.

Details of the President guidelines of the documents obtained by THISDAY showed that the PDP would screen its presidential aspirants that purchased the N35 million and N 5 million Expression of Interest and nomination forms on April 18.

The sales of forms for presidential aspirants would end on April 15, commencing March 17.
Also, the documents showed that the party would screen all governorship aspirants on April 16; the Senate and the House of Representatives aspirants on April 12, while the aspirants for the state House of of Assembly would be screened on April 9.

The panel to hear appeals of aggrieved members would sit on April 21.
Furthermore, while the presidential convention has been slated for May 28 and 29, the processes that would herald the election of ad hoc and the statutory delegates, would kick off between April 23 and May 7.

Curiously, however, all the approved dates for the processes for the emergence of the presidential standard bearer, was without recourse to the 37-man zoning committee.

According to the guidelines and schedule of activities released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), all the political parties are expected to commence campaigns for the presidential run on October 3 as the presidential and the National Assembly elections would hold on February 25, 2023, while the governorship and state House of Assembly would hold on March 11 2023.

Not unexpectedly, this development has forced some members of the PDP National Executive Committee (NEC) to question the sincerity of the party leadership over the setting up of the committee from each states of the federation and Federal Capital Territory.

Meanwhile, the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party constituted the three-man committee to resolve issues in the Edo State Chapter of party, because of the dimension the matter had begun to take.

This was part of the resolutions reached at the 95th NEC meeting of the Party held on Wednesday, March 16, 2022, and contained in a statement by the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Debo Ologunagba

Edo PDP crisis reverberated last week following diatribe between Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State and his Edo State counterpart, Godwin Obasike, over threat by Edo’s Deputy Governor, Philip Shauibu, that they would quit if not absolved into the party.

National Chairman of PDP, Iyorchia Ayu, had asked party members to refrain from “attacking” each other

He gave the advice while addressing a joint meeting of the Board of Trustees (BoT) and NEC of the party at the PDP headquarters in Abuja.
He said “attacks” were a distraction for the party, and that the focus now should be on winning elections.

Ayu, who urged party members to settle their differences “in-house”, added: “I am calling on every single member of the PDP family to put their differences aside. We are not out to fight against ourselves; our goal is to unite the party, go out as we used to do, win elections as we used to do.”