"WE are going to witness a fast driving on the political highway, emergency lane crossing, causing severe accidents and deaths. We are going to witness uncontrollable and over-bolting ambition and application of methods that are less than orthodox and certainly crass unethical”.
With these words, the national chairman of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Audu Ogbeh, warned that the 2007 presidential contest may be bloody.
And to forestall the bloodshed in the race, the ruling party chairman said the PDP would soon come up with a code of conduct for aspirants for elective offices, especially those hoping to vie for the presidency, saying contravention would lead to expulsion from the party.
He also complained that campaigns for the 2007 polls were coming too early, saying the party would place restriction on campaigns while those who violate run the risk of being disqualified from contesting on PDP's platform.
Ogbeh, who spokeyesterday at a parley in Lafia, Nasarawa State to round off the tour of the North Central Zone by the PDP national leadership, warned those eyeing the presidency and other offices through the 2007 general elections: “There is no harm in ambition, no harm in the desire to rule but we must watch ourselves and not become willing accomplices in evil happenings”.
“We must avoid deliberate involvement in mischief for the sake of achieving an objective, and we must remember as religious as we are or claim to be that no matter how great our ambition is only God will give to whoever he wishes power and authority. No matter how we boast, none of us can say that our destiny is in our hands, there is our God in heaven” , Ogbeh added.
The PDP chairman said that there will be a NEC meeting shortly and a policy will emerge. “ Those who seek to contest offices on the platform of this party would be given a code of conduct, the campaigns have become far early”, the PDP chairman pointed out.
He lamented that the party could not continue to give Nigerians and the world the impression that all it is interested in is one election after the other and nothing else again.
“We are saying that there is governance and therefore people who want to contest will be told when to start campaigns, posters restrictions will be placed and those who violate them run the risk of not being allowed to run on the platform of the party”, he said.
Ogbeh also said that the Federal Government was committed to encouraging local production of food, fruits and other domestic needs in order to generate employment for Nigerians.
He reiterated that President Olusegun Obasanjo would ban importation of rice in 2006 but that before then enough provision would have been made in Nigeria to produce more than enough.
Chief Tony Anenih, the acting chairman of the PDP board of trustees, also addressing the meeting, harped on party discipline and said that henceforth anybody no matter how highly placed that runs counter to the interest and the positions of the party would be expelled.
On the protracted crisis in the party in Kwara State, Anenih said all the issues on the matter were exhaustively discussed at the meeting in the interest and progress of the party in the state. Governor Bukola Saraki of Kwara State also told journalists that all the crisis in the party had been resolved and that the party leadership would soon come up with an acceptable position before next week runs out
