The acting National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Umar Damagum, had said that the party’s doors remained opened to defected members.
Damaum stated this at a PDP Consultative Conference, held on Wednesday in Abuja,
“Let it be said and known that our doors remain open to those who wish to return and it is my earnest prayers that in their return, they may rediscover themselves.
“After all, we are still the party that gave many their first political home,” he said.
Damagum described PDP as a formidable entity whose founding fathers faced intimidation and detention.
He acknowledged that the party had witnessed some internal ‘fractures’, including a significant one in 2013 and the one currently happening.
The acting national chairman, however, maintained that PDP remained the only platform capable of returning power to the people, in spite the self-inflicted injury it had suffered.
He described the conference as a reaffirmation of PDP’s vitality and its focus on reclaiming its central role in Nigerian politics.
Chairman of PDP Governors’ Forum and Governor of Bauchi State, Bala Mohammed, urged defectors not to “de-market” PDP through which many of them had achieved their political aspirations.
He also advised members who had joined the coalition but still remain in PDP to make their stand known, saying: ‘You cannot be in PDP and be in coalition with another party’.
“We don’t want to join issues with anybody out of humility and respect for our elders who brought us up. But certainly, as the chairman has said, we cannot take indiscipline to a level where it becomes contagious.
“If you are in PDP, you are in PDP. You cannot be in PDP and be in coalition with another party. We cannot do this. But you have all the time to decide. Coalition is an aberration.
“You cannot belong to two places. You cannot be a hermaphrodite. You cannot be a man and a woman at the same time. Be who you want to be.
“But we will still give you the opportunity to have a second thought because you are our leaders.
“Some of them left us and caused our loss in 2015, and yet we accommodated them. They left and came back.
“Some of them became governors, while some took tickets and just sprayed. It is only in PDP you get that. But sadly, we still respect them,” he said.
Mohammed, however, affirmed the party’s continued unity in spite of the recent defections.
