Sheriff hired by APC to cause chaos in PDP – Committee alleges; berates ‘lawless’ take-over

The Senator Ahmed Makarfi-led National Caretaker Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Tuesday, alleged that the sacked acting national chairman of the party, Senator Ali Modu Sheriff, was acting out a script written for him by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
Publicity Secretary of the committee, Dayo Adeyeye, said this at a press conference addressed by five out of the seven members of the committee in Abuja.
The committee described Sheriff’s “takeover” of the party secretariat as a brazen act of lawlessness and an attempt to set the stage for a violent confrontation.
The main opposition party is divided into two factions, one led by Sheriff and the other by Makarfi, which is backed by the party’ s governor as well as the Board of Trustees (BoT).
The PDP had, until last month, had split into three factions with one of the factions led by Senator Ibrahim Mantu; the second consisted of governors, while the third was headed by Sheriff.
The governors and other stakeholders had, on May 21, converged on Port Harcourt for the party’s national convention, where a caretaker committee, headed by Makarfi, was constituted.
The Mantu group, which held a separate meeting in Abuja on the day the Port Harcourt convention held, later on June 7, endorsed the Makarfi committee.
But the Sheriff faction described the caretaker committee as illegal, saying it had no place in the PDP constitution.
Adeyeye alleged that Sheriff, in company of the former National Secretary, Prof. Olawale Oladipo, and former National Auditor, Alhaji Fatai Adeyanju, invaded the secretariat with three lorry loads of thugs and bandits as early as 6am on Monday.
“Up to a point, the police discharged their responsibilities satisfactorily. However, later on, without any justification whatsoever, Ali Modu Sheriff and the other renegades were allowed to gain entry into the secretariat, where they later proceeded to address a press conference.’’
He stressed that it was curious that the police claimed to be acting on “orders from above” in allowing Sheriff and his cohorts to gain entry into the secretariat.
“The All Progressives Congress has contracted Sheriff and his cohorts to scuttle the chances of the PDP in the Edo governorship election.
“We have credible intelligence that Sheriff had a meeting on Sunday night with an (unnamed) APC governor from the North-West, where it was organised that he would be given full security and financial support to exacerbate the crisis in the PDP with the objective of preventing the PDP from presenting a candidate for the Edo governorship election, or in the very least, to prevent the PDP from offering a serious challenge to the APC, whose electoral fortunes have continued to nosedive,” he said.
However, reacting, Sheriff’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Inuwa Bwala, said, “Senator Ali Sheriff is too big to be used by anybody, least of all the APC, to destroy a party he is trying to and weaning from the milk of impunity and rebuilding to give Nigerians a credible alternative.
“He left the APC based on principle and has not had contact with the party ever since. The so-called caretaker committee knows that INEC will not accept any list from it; so, it is desperate to get recognition.
“We know for certain that the leader of that group has a presidential ambition and he appears to have recruited some governors, who are now backing him to use the PDP platform, knowing that Ali Sheriff is a stickler for the right things being done; he sees him as an obstacle that must be removed.”
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