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Obasanjo group fails to unseat Ogbeh
NDIDI OKAFOR, Abuja
THE attempt
to remove the National Chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Chief
Audu Ogbeh yesterday failed as Ogbeh reiterated his right to write the
controversial letter on Anambra crisis to President Olusegun Obasanjo.
The letter criticised the President’s
handling of the crisis with Obasanjo replying and labelling Ogbeh a chameleon.
The move to remove Ogbeh, Daily
Champion gathered, was stalled by governors as 24 of them physically present
were said to have disagreed on the vexed issue.
About 20 out of the 24 governors present
at yesterday’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting, were said to have
thrown their political weight behind Ogbeh.
Tension and anxiety had enveloped the
atmosphere at the PDP secretariat in Abuja when early in the day Ogbeh
circulated a notice cancelling the NEC meeting for security reasons.
However, it took the presence of Governor
Abdullahi Kure of Niger State for the venue of the meeting to be opened and the
meeting commenced at 3.28 p.m. with President Olusegun Obasanjo absent.
Flanked by Senate President, Adolphus
Wabara, National Secretary of PDP, Chief Vincent Ogbulafor, Ogbeh presided over
the stormy meeting which he said saw members expressing "reservations over the
letter to President Obasanjo; so many members expressed strong reservations
about the letter. They said there should have been other avenues to do that."
Speaking on the resolutions of the
meeting, Ogbeh said "at the end of the meeting, we should promote unity and
reconciliation in the party. They expressed their displeasure and we gave our
explanation.
Secondly, the resolution is that the
executive should not be dissolved and that is why we are still here. If not, we
should have been ex-chairman, ex-secretary, ex-political adviser and so on."
He further said that another major
resolution of the NEC was that "NEC will meet more often now because we are also
accused of usurping the powers of NEC."
Asked his stance on the letter he wrote,
Ogbeh replied "well, they said the whole thing has embarrassed them and caused
the party stress. And I said we regret the stress and that is not to say that we
have no right to express our view."
Earlier, the National Publicity Secretary
of the party, Mr. Venatius Ikem, had said a committee of elders made up of
governors, members of the Board of Trustees (BOT) and NEC, would next week meet
with President Olusegun Obasanjo with a view to reconciling them.
The meeting which lasted over four hours was attended by
24 governors, including those of Abia, Edo, Niger, Oyo, Osun, Benue, Rivers,
Cross River, Kwara, Kaduna, Adamawa, Taraba, Ekiti, Anambra, Delta, Imo, Ebonyi,
Nasarawa, Gombe, Bauchi, Akwa Ibom and Taraba.
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