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A chieftain of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Emmanuel Ogidi, said the party is confident of winning the November 11, 2023 governorship elections in Bayelsa, Imo and Kogi.
Ogidi, a former PDP Vice-Chairman (South) in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Thursday, described PDP as a party to beat in the three states. He said that PDP and its candidates were already enjoying massive acceptance and support by majority of the people in those states.
Ogidi said the party was doing everything possible to quickly reconcile its aggrieved members or any misunderstanding within the party in the three states. According to him, this will ensure that the party is united and works together and mobilises for the party’s victory in elections. “We have the confidence of victory in the elections and that is why we want to quickly talk to one another and reconcile all grievances so that it does not affect our chances,” Ogidi said.
On the party’s petition on the 2023 general election ongoing at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT), he expressed hope that the outcome would favour the PDP. “The judges must know that whatever one sows today, he reaps tomorrow. They should do things according to their hearts,’’ he said.
Contrary to speculations PDP may not survive if the decision of the judiciary on presidential election did not favour it, Ogidi said it remained a vibrant political party. “We are going to bounce back. We have more than 60 members in the House of Reps, 36 senators, over 300 state lawmakers. We are big. There is hope,” Ogidi said.
Ogidi said though PDP seemed to be passing through some challenges at the moment, the party had its in-built mechanism to resolve any challenges.“There is no family without problems, but we have our own in-built machinery to deal with things like that. That is why we recently had a select meeting of the National Working Committee to proffer the way forward”, he said.
He said though PDP was not structured to be an opposition party, it must learn to play the role now that it has found itself in that position. “One of our setbacks is that when you look at some of the principal persons in All the Progressives Congress (APC) they were previously in the PDP,’’ Ogidi said.
On the call on the PDP leaders to suspend all members alleged to have worked against the party in the 2023 general election, Ogidi said the party would give a fair hearing on the allegations. “You need to give them a fair hearing, that is why we are contemplating setting up committees to visit each state and find out what happened and the reasons members acted the way they did. Some of them may have genuine reasons. If you have genuine reason we can reconcile,” Ogidi said.
