Posted by From Onwuka Nzeshi in Abuja on
As the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) seeks quick reconciliation of its fragmented house in order to bring peace to the party...
As the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) seeks quick reconciliation of its fragmented house in order to bring peace to the party, a chieftain of the party and former member of the National Assembly during the Third Republic, Senator Onyeka Okoroafor yesterday described the newly formed parallel group PDP as a bunch of mischief makers.
Okoroafor, a foundation member of the National Assembly Service Commission, told newsmen in Abuja that as far as he was concerned, there was no crisis in the ruling party. He added that the seeming division in the party was a creation of the media. He said the factional group led by Chief Solomon Lar was merely ‘masquerading' as PDP members when indeed they had long left the party and formed alternative parties where they planned to acquire political power.
Describing the group as fraudulent, Okoroafor said: 'Some of them left the PDP and had joined the Advanced Congress of Democrats (ACD) and other parties. For them to gather again and say they are forming a faction within the PDP…, I think that is fraud. Decent and principled people don't behave that way. They are mischief makers who have come to cause confusion. As far as PDP is concerned, there is no crisis whatsoever.
'We have closed the chapter on them. So their coming back to say they are forming a parallel line is madness. If they were smart enough they should have done it during the last convention. They should have had their own parallel convention somewhere and called it PDP Convention, then they could have made sense. The world may have said, yes PDP has two parallel factions. But six months after the convention, they left the party and went and formed another party, they came back and said they were forming a faction, it is unacceptable."
Okoroafor urged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in dealing with the political parties to avoid a situation where dissidents cash in on the liberal nature of democracy to forment trouble.