Embattled Sheriff Reveals Real Cause Of PDP Crisis

 
Ali Modu Sheriff has said that the presidential ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the 2019 elections is the main cause of the current crisis tearing the party apart.
He said this in an interview with African Independent Television (AIT), accusing Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State and a former Deputy National Chairman of PDP, Prince Uche Secondus of plotting to hand the party’s ticket to a prominent leader of the All Progressive Congress (APC).

“Wike and Secondus are working to give the party ticket in 2019 to a man in APC, a man that is not even bold enough to leave the APC and join us. He was in the PDP before. He was a founding father of the PDP.
“I don’t have to mention him. Secondus himself told me that he and Wike always meet this man to strategise plans on 2019. I told him that it is wrong. If the man is bold enough, let him come and join us now.
“They accused me of working for the APC. How? I have never played games like that. I had formed a party and was the BOT Chairman. I was a presidential candidate, three time senator, Minority Leader. Makarfi worked for the APC in 2015, Ben Obi was Atiku’s Vice Presidential Candidate, and Secondus and Wike are meeting an APC man regularly on how the party will be sold to him.
“Wike is full of arrogance and impunity. He is too small to pocket PDP. I will not allow him. There are people who can carry the flag within the party. PDP will not be sold.”
It will be recalled that Sheriff is in a battle for the soul of the party with Senator Ahmed Makarfi whose tenure as chairman of the party’s caretaker committee was extended by one yar in Port Harcourt last week.
The Police sealed the Sharks Staduim, Port Harcourt which was the supposed venue for the national convention convened by the Makarfi faction. The security agencies,however, cited an order by Justic Okon Abang of the Federal High Court, Abuja on Tuesday which restrained the party from proceeding with the convention.
Justic Ibrahim Watila of the Federal High Court, Port Harcourt on the same day validated the convention while Justice Nwakama Ogbonna of the Federal Capital Territory High Court, Abuja declared Sheriff an illegal chairman of the PDP.