BY CHAMBERLAIN ODEY, JOS – As healthy build up to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) elective convention slated for December 9, 2017 continues, delegates are demonstrating an understanding of the party’s problems and tasking their preferred candidates on what is expected of them when elected into office.
This is as a coalition of delegates from the Northern states has tasked a candidate for the office of National Legal Adviser to remain forthright in pursuit of a reformed and rejuvenated PDP.
In a message declaring support for the candidacy of a South-south candidate, Barrister Sunday Gabriel Odey, who is vying for the position of National Legal Adviser at the December convention, the coalition of delegates from the North under the umbrella of PDP Reloads, has described him as “not only qualified and professionally competent, but one of our own, who has done a lot to keep the PDP intact”.
Signed by its coordinators, Bukar Liman and Yilkes Ishaya, the group said the mission of the Northern delegates on December 9, as far as the office of the National Legal Adviser of the PDP is concerned has been concluded and their pledge is support for Barrister Odey,
The delegates Barrister urged Odey to deploy his over 30 years’ experience in law practice to service the legal framework of the party, especially by working with legal departments of the state chapters to review issues of litigation and reduce to the barest minimum, the quantum of litigation matters which over the years contributed to grating party cohesion and discipline.
The group also wants the incoming party Legal Adviser, Odey, to use his rich record in elections and elections-related cases to strengthen the party and its stakeholders with a view to entrenching an enduring culture of internal party democracy, and uphold every tenet of party administration that will entrench equity and fairness, so that members will re-embrace the party with renewed confidence as an embodiment of popular aspirations and collective will.
Noting that PDP must move away from the dismembering culture of impunity and imposition, the delegates also pledged to support Odey to develop a framework and policy that will restore party supremacy, including abrogating the position of party leader, and restore the National Chairman as custodian of the Party’s conscience and ethos.
