PDP Zones Party Chairmanship To North East, Ali Modu Sheriff Likely To Emerge

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has retained the party’s chairmanship position in the Northeast geopolitical zone for the next four years.

The decision may have paved the way for the incumbent National Chairman, Alhaji Ali Modu Sheriff, to retain the position.

He will be testing his popularity at the party’s national convention billed to hold in Port Harcourt on May 21.

The decision was the outcome of the party’s zoning committee headed by Akwa Ibom State Governor Udom Emmanuel and was adopted at yesterday’s party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting.

Other party offices were zoned to the various geopolitical zones as follows: Deputy chairman (Southsouth); National Secretary (Southwest); National Legal Adviser (Northwest); National Treasurer (Southsouth); and National Financial Secretary (Northcentral).

Others are: National Woman Leader (Northwest); National Auditor (Southwest); National Publicity Secretary (Southwest); National Organising Secretary (Southeast); and National Youth Leader (Southeast) among others.

The party will be holding another NEC meeting on May 11, to ratify amendments to its constitution.

Indication that the crisis rocking the party is far from over became more visible with the low attendance at the meeting.

Majority members of its Board of Trustees, National Caucus and others stayed away from its National Executive Committee meeting which was held in Abuja.

A meeting of the Board of Trustees (BoT) that was supposed to hold shortly before the NEC meeting failed to hold.

Traditionally, NEC meeting is held after both the BoT and the National Caucus of the party must have met.

However, the National Chairman of the party, Ali Modu Sheriff, was said to have tactically refused to call for the meetings of the two organs of the party before he hurriedly called for the NEC meeting.

Both the BoT and the National Caucus ought to have reviewed issues slated for discussion at the NEC meeting.

It was gathered that Sheriff decided not to allow the two meetings to hold because of the resolve of their members to oppose the recommendation of the zoning committee.

The committee, headed by the Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Mr. Udom Emmanuel, had recommended that the next national chairman of the party should come from the North-East.

Sheriff, a former governor of Borno State, is the only formidable candidate from the zone contesting the position of the national chairman at the party’s national convention slated for May 21 in Port Harcourt.