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The board of trustees (BoT) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has asked Iyorchia Ayu, national chairman of the party, to assure members that he will resign after the 2023 general election.
The advice to Ayu is part of the resolutions of the PDP BoT reached on Friday at a meeting in Abuja.
The BoT, led by Adolphus Wabara, had recently embarked on “reconciliatory visits” to aggrieved members of the party, especially those in the camp of Nyesom Wike, governor of Rivers.
Wike and his supporters have been demanding the resignation of Ayu after former vice-president Atiku Abubakar won the party’s presidential ticket.
The call for Ayu’s resignation is on the grounds that the national chairman and the presidential candidate of the party cannot be from the same region.
However, some members of the party had rejected the call for Ayu to resign, saying the national chairman can only resign after the presidential election in February if Abubakar wins.
On Wednesday, Wike said the national chairman must step down before the presidential election, adding that it would be “foolish” to ask Ayu to resign after the polls have been concluded.
“This is the period the power game is being played. If you don’t have it now, forget it. If anybody tells you to let (Iyorchia) Ayu resign after the election is conducted, then you are a foolish person,” the River governor had said.
Reading the communique issued after the meeting on Friday, Wabara said the “BoT called on all party leaders and persons close to them to desist forthwith from making further inflammatory remarks or press interviews”.
He said the BoT has asked the chairman of the PDP governors’ forum to convene a meeting of the forum without further delay.
According to him, all leaders of the party have been asked to “match words with action and where commitments are made to unconditionally fulfil same.”
He also said the BoT “urged the national chairman as an eminent leader, to give a firm assurance that he will resign his position after the 2023 election”.
“In the same vein, the BoT chairman has been authorised to offer apologies on behalf of all members who feel maligned or aggrieved by the public statements made by its members nationwide that have sharpened the current division in the party,” the communique reads.
“The BoT also called on the presidential candidate to review its membership of the presidential campaign council, and other advisory appointments to make it all-inclusive.”
Wabara added that the BoT will refer some of the resolutions and recommendations to the national executive committee (NEC) of the party for further action.
