PDP Crisis: BoT Bans Wike, Others From Granting Press Interviews

The Board of Trustees (BoT) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has banned Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, and other party leaders, from making further inflammatory remarks or granting press interviews, on the crisis rocking the party.

This is just as the PDP National Chairman, Iyorchia Ayu said the allegations against him by Wike were false.

The BoT had set up a six-member Special Committee led by the acting Chairman Senator Adolphus Wabara, to visit and reconcile aggrieved members of the party.

The report of the committee was submitted to BoT members who met on Friday to take a decision on the lingering crisis. Ayu is a member of the BoT.

Wabara, who read a communiqué issued at the end of the meeting, called on the Chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, who is also the Governor of Sokoto State, to convene a meeting of the governors without further delay.

It, however, advised “all the leaders of the party to match words with action, and where commitments are made to unconditionally fulfil same.”

The communiqué called on the National Chairman “as an eminent leader, to give a firm assurance that he would resign his position after the 2023 elections.

“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 across the country that has sharpen the current division in the party.”

The BoT also called on Atiku to review appointments of members of the campaign council and other advisory appointments to make it all inclusive.

“The BoT will refer some of these recommendations for noting and appropriate action to NEC of our party in due course,” the communiqué added.

Ayu, who spoke for the first time since the crisis in the party took a different turn, said the allegation that he collected N1 billion from a presidential aspirant, by the Rivers State governor, was false.

Wike had alleged that the National Chairman collected the sum of N1 billion from a presidential aspirant in Lagos, and another N100 million twice, from an unnamed PDP governor, as well as from the National Working Committee (NWC), to renovate the Peoples Democratic Institute (PDI), a training arm of the PDP.