Supreme Court Judgement Strengthens PDP – Mwatkong
Members of the Peoples Democratic Party are celebrating Wednesday morning’s Supreme Court judgment which dismissed the claims by the Ali Modu Sheriff-led faction to the leadership of the party as farcical and baseless.
The apex instead upheld the status of the Ahmed Makarifi Caretaker Committee as the duly constituted authority of the party.
In a chat with news men in Jos, immediate pafst member of the House of Representatives for Barkin Ladi/Ryom federal constituency, Hon Simon Mwatkong, said the verdict of the apex court will go a long way to strengthen the Party as a virile opposition party.
Mwatkong said the development has brightened the future of the party as it will go a long way to reassert its platform as a worthwhile option for Nigerian to actualise their aspirations, and for Nigerians to expect to be provided with quality democracy dividends, and to that extent, vote it to power in the next general elections.
Describing it as “a victory for democracy and the entire country”, Mwatkong said the continuation of the crisis was not good for the Party, adding that it was even worse for the country as it appeared at some point that “the entire country was drifting towards a one-party state.”
He also said that at a point, the governing All Progressives Congress was celebrating the crisis in the PDP even as he said that the judgment has little or no retrogressive implications for the states and local government areas.
According to him; “In any state where there were pockets of agitations, such have to fall into line right away because the leadership of the party is not in any way in dispute, and even the earlier judgment of the Court of Appeal recognized the structures of the party from the ward up to the zonal level.”
Mwatkong, who was also a former chairman of Ryom Local Government Council, said the challenge now for the PDP is to provide a level playing ground, allow internal democracy to reign, so that popular choices will emerge from popular processes and mass participation so that the PDP will win the elections at all levels during the next general elections.
He advised the Ahmed Makarifi Caretaker Committee to proceed and immediately set the machinery in motion for the conduct of the party’s national convention to elect a substantive national leadership that will lead the party to the general elections in 2019.​