The Inter Party Advisory Council (IPAC), yesterday in Abuja, re-elected High Chief Peter Ameh as its president for another one year.
The first tenure of Ameh, who is also the National Chairman of the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA) ended on September 5.
Daily Trust reports that 68 delegates comprising political parties’ officials converged at The Electoral Institute (TEI) for the election.
Ameh said the council had adopted the nomenclature ‘president’ as the new official designation of the overall leader at the national level instead of ‘chairman’ to differentiate the position with those of chairmen in state chapters.
Speaking to newsmen after his re-election, Ameh accused state governors of stifling multi-party democracy in the country.
He said some politicians did not believe in the supremacy of political parties that brought them to power, hence they easily defected to other parties.
He also called for local government autonomy to detach them from the whims and caprices of governors so that new political parties could begin to win elections at ward and local government levels.
“If we were like South Africa, and Tanzania, with free and fair, credible electoral systems, we will not be here talking about many parties. We have 774 local governments; we have thousands of wards to be won by young people. But as I talk to you, the emperors who are governors in the states do not allow any other political parties to win anything and it has become very difficult to build a new political party no matter how powerful and how brainy the chairman is,” Ameh said.
