Melaye under pressure over PDP leadership crisis

Under the auspices of PDP Frontliners, party members disparaged Dino Melaye, the party’s previous nominee for the governorship sit, and accused him of tarnishing the party’s reputation with unwarranted verbal assaults on its leadership.

Melaye’s claims that the party has been “commercialized and privatized” under Amb. Umar Damagum’s leadership were deemed impolite by them. This was said in a statement yesterday in Abuja that was signed by the president, Alhaji Hussein Mohammed, the secretary, and the publicity secretary, Mr. Dan Okafor.

Following Melaye’s outburst, the leaders of the PDP claimed that “vultures of different hues” both inside and outside the party are now circling, expecting to witness the party’s demise and seize swift advantage. As devoted party members, they pledged to resist. They promised to battle alongside other progressive members to prevent the success of such terrible expectations and the individuals who support them.

“These are strange times for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), its Kogi state governorship candidate in the last elections who got huge resources but woefully failed to do any serious political mobilization,” the statement said in part.

“Now has the guts to come out and say that the party is being destroyed by the exact officials who facilitated his governorship ticket and persuaded others to step down.”

The PDP gave Dino Melaye a senatorial ticket after he forced other eligible candidates to resign, but as you can all see, he is using a baseless and groundless insult to exact revenge. Many people who benefited generously from the PDP are now among the party’s biggest headaches. Melaye received a PDP ticket to the House of Representatives.

As per the group’s statement, Senator Melaye’s decision to ignore his own well-known flaws and falsely blame the party’s unfavorable outcomes on National Secretary Samuel Anyanwu, acting National Chairman Umar Iliya Damagum, National Organising Secretary Umar Bature, and the people of Kogi State and the PDP, was a gratuitous insult.

The group went on, “Dino Melaye received large contributions for the Kogi state governorship election last year, including cars from PDP stakeholders, but he never distributed campaign funds to party structures or even PDP polling agents throughout Kogi state; it has never been this bad since 1999, but Dino Melaye’s failure generated a pitiful 46,000 votes for PDP.”