A new party recently formed by associates of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Movement, PDM, has praised leading members of the Peoples Democratic Party for walking out of the ruling party’s special convention Saturday and announcing a parallel faction.
Atiku’s associates formed the PDM weeks ago and there are speculations that the platform was registered principally to actualize the presidential ambition of the former vice president.
The PDP had today descended into a full blown crisis when Atiku, seven state governors and other leading party members walked out of the Abuja convention and then addressed a press conference to say they had taken over the party.
But in a statement Saturday night, National Chairman of the PDM, Bashir Yusuf Ibrahim, praised the dissenting PDP chieftains for displaying bravery and statesmanship in challenging authorities of the PDP.
“The Peoples Democratic Movement today salutes the bravery and statesmanship of the dissenting delegates of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, for staying calm in the face of utmost provocation and outright oppression during the just concluded PDP National Convention, held at Eagle Square Abuja,” the statement said.
“We appreciate their bold, brave and patriotic stand of these delegates for refusing to participate in an election which they knew gave no even playing ground to all stakeholders.’’
Mr. Bashir added that PDM, which he described as a party of true democracy, equity fairness, would continue to “stand shoulder to shoulder to shoulder with all true democrats who wish to make Nigeria great again through positive political change”.
The PDM, he said, would, within a few weeks, throw open its online and manual registration of prospective members within and outside the country.
Atiku and his colleagues had walked out of the convention to protest the actions of the organisers who had disqualified majority of the contestants vying for party positions.
Over 50 of the 75 aspirants, mostly presumed to be loyal to opponents of President Goodluck Jonathan’s second term ambition within the PDP, were disqualified from vying for the 17 available National Working Committee, NWC, positions of the party.
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