Onyekachi Eze 
- Damagum’s continued leadership source of crisis – Ugochinyere
Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Ibrahim Abdullahi has blamed the former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar for the crisis in the party.
Also a and member of the House of Representatives Ikenga Ugochinyere, said the continued stay in office of Ambassador Umar Damagum as PDP acting National Chairman, is source of crisis in the party.
The duo spoke in Abuja yesterday at a “Fix PDP To Fix Nigeria,” conference. Abdullahi said though the present the National Working Committee (NWC) inherited the problems in the party, Atiku was PDP candidate in 2019 and 2023, is only interested in its ticket not in building the party.
He recalled that the former vice president left with five governors from the PDP in 2013 only to surface again in 2019 and was given the party’s ticket. “We all rallied behind this same Atiku and we went to that election. We know what happened in that election; we went to court and lost.
“After the court judgement, Atiku went to Dubai. Nobody saw him again until the campaign for the 2023 election began,” Abdullahi noted. He accused Atiku and former PDP National Chairman Iyorchia Ayu for the loss of the 2023 presidential election.
“There is no way at the eve of that election five governors would be threatening this party and Atiku Abubakr would play that kind of levity and carelessness to say that they can go to hell.
“We saw it clearly and some of us came all out and said to Atiku, you are losing it, as if we have not learned any lesson from the 2014 convention where five governors walked out of a convention.
“With five governors walking out of a convention and we say they can go to hell. Ayu did all that he needed to do to ensure that that was sabotaged as an insider,” he stated.
Ugochinyere blamed PDP crisis on Damagum and the former governor of Rivers State, noting that lawmakers elected on the platform of the party and other members, are leaving PDP because the symbol of the party, which is an umbrella is no longer wide enough to cover them.
“We seem to be working for different people and different interests now. But we need to come back to realise that we are opposition and restructure ourselves along that opposition line, the way you have opposition in Senegal, in Ghana, in other parts of West Africa.”
