PDP Youth Group Urges Party to Reconsider Primaries Results in Plateau

By Seriki Adinoyi in Jos

Group operating under the aegis of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Youth Mandate Actualisation Network has called on the party to look into party primaries in Plateau South Senatorial zone of the party where the Senatorial and the Governorship candidates both emerged from same tribe in the same local government area.

Senator Jeremiah Useni, the flag-bearer of the PDP in the 2019 general elections is Taroh from Langtang North LGA and Mr. Peter Dandam Kefas, the flag-bearer of the party for the Plateau South Senatorial zone is also Taroh from Langtang North LGA. 

Addressing newsmen in Jos, Mr. Noel Begun Dogari, former Assistant Legal Adviser of the PDP in the state said, “Our inability to foresee these outcomes, especially at the Senatorial district level is a major cause we do not accept it and wish to sound with a loud voice and in clear terms that the national secretariat and all relevant organs of the party must step in and do all within its powers as enshrined in the written and unwritten constitution of our great party to address this matter.

“We call for the adjustment of the imbalance in the southern zone and I believe the party is set to re-take our mandate come February, 2019.

“Anyone who has followed the political history of our state would agree that it is always not a surprise that either Langtang North or Langtang South will win due to the imbalance in the creation of federal wards or constituencies as an ethnic group with control of close to thirty federal wards in the zone. It will take as much as the brutal suppression of candidates from among the remaining ethnic groups as was the experience at the APC primaries before such capacity can be deprived them.

“However, it is in a bid to cure this ugly development that our great party has enshrined in its constitution the doctrine of zoning of elective and appointive positions so as to continually foist a situation of perpetual domination within its membership.

“The mood of the people in four out of the six local government areas in the zone Wase, Mikang, Quaapan and Shendam that comprise of the southern zone of Plateau state suddenly has become one of melancholia once the Senatorial primaries were concluded, this is not unconnected with the facts that the Tarohs have enjoyed more than a fair share of the Senatorial slot in the zone, since the return to civil rule in 1999, Langtang North has produced four out of the five senators who have represented and still represent the Southern senatorial district at the chambers. 

“We must state that the miscalculations and highhandedness that characterised the party just before her ousting in 2015 steers us in the face as we foresee a populist revolt against the current status quo which may lead us to avoidable defeat, as concerned party faithful, we find the attempt to relive the past, a clear case of recklessness on the side of our great party. “

On the just concluded Local Government election, Dogari posited that as average citizens of the state that feel the pain of mis-governance, of poor performances of insecurity, of employment and deprivation, “We congratulate the teeming supporters of our great party  whose mass turnout forced  the staff of the state independent electoral commission off collation of  results in  which our party had massively won in most out of the eleven LGAs declared as has been reported by many of our members across the areas in which the said elections were claimed  to have been won by the APC.”