A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Raymond Dokpesi, said yesterday that he cannot be pushed aside in the race for the national chairmanship of the party.
Dokpesi, who stated this in an interview with pressmen in Abuja, said the sub-zoning of the PDP chairmanship to the South-West was not sacrosanct.
Leaders of the party from the South had met on Thursday, August 4 and agreed to zone the office of national chairman to the South West, ahead of the August 17 convention slated for Port Harcourt.
Also, there are suggestions that the PDP governors were angling for a different candidate even as Dokpesi hails from Edo State in the South-South sub-region.
Dokpesi said he was not perturbed by any scheming, adding that he had carried his campaign to 34 out of the 36 states of the federation and the FCT, and that his chances are brighter than that of any other aspirant.
“I want us to just hope and pray that the (PDP) governors, who spoke out very clearly after the Sen. Ali Modu Sheriff episode, that they’ve learnt their lessons, would allow the party to make its own decisions as they said.
“And I believe them, even when I’ve seen some departure from that. I’m not naïve to believe that I should take their word hook and sinker as it would appear. I want to hold that Nigerians are watching; there’s nobody that’s the owner of the PDP, the party belongs to everybody.”
He, however, said no matter the circumstances, he would be last person to leave the PDP.
“The consequence of not allowing internal democracy to prevail in the PDP is the fact that the party will break. The party will disappear into oblivion. If the PDP does not reform now, it will not survive the crisis,” he said.
