The National Executive Committee (NEC) and Board of Trustees (BoT) of the PDP would hold emergency meetings today to discuss variety of issues.
A reliable source at the PDP national secretariat told Daily Trust in a telephone interview last night that the two meetings would discuss the choice of strong presidential candidate and the demand by some members of the R-APC.
Daily Trust had last week reported that sharing formula was threatening the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by 39 political parties with the PDP in the lead.
The parties had agreed to field a single presidential candidate that would unseat President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019. The PDP alone had over 15 presidential aspirants while many of the political parties that signed the MoU also had their presidential hopefuls.
Our correspondent gathered that today’s meetings by the two organs of the PDP would also include discussing some of the conditions given by members of R-APC led by Engr. Buba Galadima.
The demands by R-APC included the need for PDP change its name to improve its image as well as giving automatic tickets to its members currently occupying elective positions in the national and state assemblies.
However, the PDP National Chairman, Prince Uche Secondus, the BoT Chairman, Senator Walid Jibrin and party’s National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan did not pick their calls or respond to text messages.
Another source said the leadership of the PDP and R-APC were all irked by last week’s meeting between President Muhammadu Buhari and Senate President Bukola Saraki.
“All of them are disturbed that Saraki might change his mind from dumping the APC after his meeting with Buhari; they really want him to join them in the coalition believing that he would come with large followership from the Senate and other places,” he said.
Daily Trust reports that leaders of both the APC and PDP had stepped up contacts in the past few days to mend fences and attract new followership. There were reports yesterday that President Buhari would meet the leadership of R-APC and other aggreived members of the APC but a source close to the presidency said there was no certainty about the meeting.
