The Caretaker Committee Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Ahmed Makarfi, has said that the party is committed to settling all its internal crises to make it strong enough to retake power in 2019.
The former Kaduna State governor, however, decried the tactics of the PDP factional leader, Senator Ali Modu Sheriff, to frustrate the peace and reconciliation efforts in the party.
Makarfi, who spoke in Kaduna, said in a few weeks from now, people would begin to see a lot of activities, “because nobody is going to pin us down and stagnate the party. I am assuring you that nobody will hold PDP down and make it impotent.”
He said 99 per cent of the members of the party had resolved to put the crisis that has rocked the party behind them and work together to rescue the country from its economic recession.
He said Sheriff had allegedly frustrated the reconciliation and peace moves through his actions and positions. “I reminded him that I don’t represent myself and as such I don’t have anything personal to negotiate.”
He added: “Whatever I can take back to the governors, our National Assembly members, Board of Trustees (BoT) and the other parties must be something which makes sense to them and which will be acceptable to them. I cannot sit down alone with him and negotiate what I know will not be generally acceptable to the party that I represent.
“It is not about me. Reducing these issues to me is being myopic. I represent the organs of the party. Yes, we want peace but we want an everlasting peace and not a temporary or smokescreen peace that would later create more problems than we have now.
“The mandate that I had from BoT, the governors, National Assembly caucus and states’ chapter chairmen was that we set up a committee of 15 each to sit down and discuss on the basis of the initial agreement we reached. This peace process can progress if he (Sheriff) allows this committee to begin sitting and talk.
“What the outcome may be, I am not in a position to say. But, at least we would have created a forum for talking to take place. And for me, anything that comes out of that, I will accept and implement. I have nothing personal. And what I am saying is that to personalise it between myself and Sheriff is purely to miss the point, because on his side, it is also beyond him.”
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