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By  Soni Daniel,          Regional Editor, North LAGOS — Governor of Bayelsa State and Chairman, Peoples Democratic Party ad-hoc committee on reconciliation, Mr. Seriake Dickson, yesterday, said he was ready to reconcile all aggrieved members of the party with a view to ensuring the success of the party in the next election. Dickson, who has come under attack as unsuitable to head the committee apparently because of his closeness to the President, said he would be neutral and fair in handling his assignment. The governor said he would first consult with the founding fathers and stakeholders of the party with a view to ensuring the success of his committee. Dickson said the committee was conscious of the enormous responsibility being placed on the members and that they had resolved to conduct the assignment with the highest sense of responsibility and commitment to the core values of national unity and party cohesion. The position of the committee was contained in a statement signed by ...

By JIDE AJANI “Before people decide what they think of your message, they decide onwhat they think of you” – Harvard Business Review (July-August, 201 So, what do Nigerians think of  People’s Democratic Party, PDP, and its message to day? Ask its leader, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan!  He can speak for the party. Or, better still, ask the owners of the party! Almost all of them would echo and ape Mr. President. Leaders and owners of the party would say the useful things; yet they go ahead to do the useless things – that is the way of the organised chaos under the umbrella called PDP. First, how did the party get to a point where the President is heading for the hilltop whereas some other leaders in the same party are speeding down the valley?  What thinking goes on in a party where there is no love lost between some state governors and their President? But there is something inescapable and binding still: wealth and power. The roots of the dog-eat-dog syndrome that manifests in eve...

By Henry Umoru ABUJA— NATIONAL Chairman of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, Wednesday, said that the party will not die, as it has come to stay as an institution despite threats from some quarters that the party will be buried by some of its members. Tukur said that like democracy as propounded by Socrates, which outlived him and became universally acceptable, PDP will outlive those he accused as wishing it premature death and gain more recognition worldwide as the largest political party in the black Africa. Tukur speaks In a statement by his Special Assistant, Media, Prince Oliver Okpala, he said: “It is unfortunate that in Nigeria, like in other advanced countries, orientation courses, seminars and retreats are not organised for elected governors to help reform and remodel them into being politically and socially civil in their public utterances, mode of dressing, social comportment and the norms of the society as against their past indoctrination and behaviour. ...

BY JOHNBOSCO AGBAKWURU ABUJA -THE leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in the South West has promised to enlist the services of the traditional rulers in the zone to ensure that President Goodluck Jonathan is re-elected in the 2015 Presidential election. National Secretary of the party, Prof. Wale Oladipo who disclosed this while reaffirming his support for President Jonathan`s second term endorsement said, “I stand by the endorsement of the president by South West chapter of the party.” Prof. Oladipo further stated that as a prince of Ife, he would mobilize royal fathers and the intellectual community from the South West zone for the realization of the second term ambition of President Jonathan. Apart from his endorsement of the president’s re-election, he also promised to be loyal to and work with the party’s national chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur in a bid to make members of the PDP to see themselves as members of a political family. The nuclear physicist who said that h...

The nation and the world at large got a shocker on Tuesday, 9th July 2013 when the simmering crisis in the state’s chapter of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the Rivers State House of Assembly resulted in a free-for-all in the House chamber. Members of the Assembly were seen attacking one another with dangerous objects which left some of them seriously injured and hospitalised. The faction of five members of the House opposed to Governor Chibuike Amaechi, threw caution to the winds and assembled early that day and announced they had impeached the Speaker, Hon Otelemabala Amachree. In his place, Hon Evans Bipi presented himself as the new Speaker. The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 stipulates that for the impeachment of any elected official to be valid, not less than two-thirds of the members of the House must vote in its favour. This clearly did not happen. The most regrettable part of it was that the Police, having been intimated of the possibility of tro...