Umar Sani, a former Senior Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to Vice President Namadi Sambo, has pinpointed the huge mistakes Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), National Chairman, Iyorchia Ayu, have made amid the crisis rocking the party.
Recall that the PDP has been witnessing a crisis since the emergence of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar as its 2023 presidential candidate.
Crises erupted in the PDP when presidential candidate Atiku picked Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State as his running mate for next year’s election.
Wike has been aggrieved with PDP’s leadership over Atiku’s choice of a running mate.
Atiku ignored Wike, who came second during the PDP’s presidential primaries a few months ago, a situation tearing the party apart.
Following his action, Wike called for the resignation of Ayu.
The governor insisted that the North could not produce PDP’s presidential candidate and the National Chairman.
However, speaking on Arise TV’s Morning Show on Friday, Sani highlighted some of the mistakes Wike and Ayu had made in the past amid the crisis in the PDP.
Sani said: “Both sides have really made mistakes. Apportioning the blame as to which sides made more mistakes is difficult for anybody to make.
“However, for instance, it is not proper for a national chairman after a convention to go and hug somebody who withdrew on behalf of somebody and called him the hero of democracy. That is not proper. I am not in support of that because it shows that you, who is supposed to be an umpire in the matter, have already taken sides with one of the insides, and again, I know that Ayu is part of the founding fathers.
“Because if you go to the G-18 and G-34. He is part of the G-34 because he is a founding father of the party, and again in politics, you can’t go in public and say that they are small children, it is also undermining them. So naturally, they are going to feel aggrieved. However, coming back to Governor Wike, the party is greater than any individual or group of individuals. We are talking about the supremacy of the party.
“You cannot every day go on the podium in Port Harcourt and lambast every member of the party. He has made so many mistakes. He has done so many things to undermine the party. Even at the 2019 convention, he said in 2018 that if he was not taken to Port Harcourt, he would deal with the party. These are all mistakes both sides have made, and if both sides are making mistakes, it doesn’t still translate to the fact that the matter cannot be resolved internally.
“It is not for public consumption. It is not something that cannot be resolved. We have enough elders within the party, we have respected persons within the party who can actually resolve this matter, and I think if this matter is treated under closed doors, the matter would be amicably resolved, and the party would move forward.”
