The Campaign Council of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential Candidate, Atiku Abubakar, says it is not being held by the rift between Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State and Senator Iyioricha Ayu, National Chairman of the party.
Wike, who lost the presidential ticket of the party to Atiku and was not selected as running mate of the party’s flagbearer, has been calling for the resignation of Ayu.
His allies who were appointed into the Presidential Campaign Council had withdrawn, giving Ayu’s removal as the condition for them to work for the party.
When he featured on ARISE TV’s Morning Show on Friday, Barrister Daniel Bwala, a spokesman of the campaign, said though reconciliatory efforts were in place, the party is not allowing the issues to hold it down.
Responding to a question raised by Reuben Abati, one of the anchors of the show, Bwala said, “I will answer the question but permit me to state for the record that the Nigerian press has set the agenda for us in the past two, three weeks in their various interventions. They said when the campaign starts, political parties should focus on issues, and not bother on mundane or things that are not associated with the issues.
“Now we decided to fully comply with the Nigerian press because they hold the public to account; they hold public officers or political office aspirants to account on behalf of the people. If we are to go by the agenda set by the Nigerian press, then it is safe to say that the conversation with us should be about our agenda for the Nigerian people rather than the issues associated with party.
“But in any case, if the press is inclined to that, I would only say that Daniel Bwala is a spokesman for the campaign. The party has publicity secretary that will deal with party affairs. As far as I know, the party has had NWC meeting were resolutions in preparation for the elections were passed. We had our NEC meeting where those resolutions were ratified. NEC passed a vote of confidence on NWC and since then, we have released our campaign council we have inaugurated them, we participated in the signing of the Peace Park. We have in fact, commenced our campaign, but the official one starts on Monday. We’ll be happy to engage with the Nigerian people on matters that are ahead of us. We’ve gone past the issue of whether somebody is aggrieved in the party or not.”
Asked if reconciliatory moves are in place, he said, “We have commenced campaign. It will be a little bit strange if we are forced to believe that we have not moved on. On the question of how we are engaging with Wike, as a political party, you don’t assume that everything is over until it is actually over. The people with the responsibility of engaging in this issue, the Board of Trustees, have been doing so from when they first were assigned with that role to today. There is marked progress. We have seen that the Board of Trustees visited him (Wike) last week or so. We have also seen that they went to go to engage with his friends. And we have also seen that appreciable progress is made in that regard. As far as I know. And as far as I’m concerned. As far as the campaign is concerned, we’ve moved on and as far as party reconciliation is concerned, it is ongoing.”
