BREAKING: Fayose, Ladoja, George, others meet over PDP chairmanship to agree on southwest candidate
– Governor Fayose has held meeting with Chief Bode George, Ladoja others over PDP national chairmanship candidate
– He said that the meeting was held to fine-tune how the party would present a consensus candidate from the southwest during its next national convention
– Ladoja who was the former governor of Oyo state said that he has officially return to PDP
Some South-west chieftains of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have begun moves to agree on a candidate for the national chairmanship position of the party for the region ahead of its national convention in December.
Punch reports that at a meeting convened by Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti state, which was held at the Renaissance Hotel in Lagos on Monday night, October 16, the party chieftains agreed to hold several other meetings to present a common front at the convention.
plusmilang.com gathered that apart from Fayose, those present at the meeting included a former governor of Oyo state, Rashidi Ladoja; a former Deputy National Chairman of the PDP, Chief Bode George; a former Minister of Information, Dapo Sarumi; a former National Vice Chairman of the PDP (South-West), Alhaji Tajudeen Oladipupo.
Confirming that he had convened the meeting, Fayose said he had called them for the meeting to “to share aspirations with them, find a common ground and go to the convention as an indivisible and united” group.
The governor said it would be wrong for the South-West PDP to “go to the convention like people without cohesion”.
He said there would be subsequent meetings which would involve other key stakeholders of the party in the region to decide on a candidate among the aspirants vying for the position in the region.
The national chairmanship position of the PDP had been zoned to the South-West and there has been a silent battle among a number of the party’s chieftains in the region over who should get the position.
Those who have declared their interest in the position include George; a former governor of Ogun state, Otunba Gbenga Daniel; and a former Minister of Education, Prof. Tunde Adeniran. Both Daniel and Adeniran were not at the meeting, but Fayose expressed confidence that they would be at subsequent ones.
He said Daniel had sent a message that he could not make it to the venue of the meeting because he was held up, adding that he believed that both he and Adeniran would also be at the next meeting.
Ladoja, who contested for the 2015 governorship election in Oyo state on the platform of Accord Party, said he was officially back in the PDP. Ladoja was governor of Oyo State under the PDP platform before he defected to Accord Party.
At the meeting, the former Oyo State governor said he was still consulting with people on whether to also contest for the national chairmanship position of the PDP, adding that by the end of the week, his decision on the matter would be made public. Oladipupo said: “PDP has only one governor in the Southwest in the person of Fayose.
He is our rallying point and he is the leader of the party in the Southwest, and more so; he is also the Chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum.
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“For this reason, he must be our rallying point to make our decision known at the national convention. We endorse his calling this meeting and many more with more stakeholders before the convention. It is privilege that we have him as our governor.”
George, who also endorsed the meeting, said: “It gladdens my heart that all is not lost in the South-West. Those that say that we are like a rudderless ship will now see that we are a solid ship.”
