A group made up of about five men on Wednesday ‘opened’ a parallel secretariat for the main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party, in Abuja.
The five men are Prince Obi Nwosu, Alhaji Hassan Adamu, Chief Olusola Akindele, Chief Godwin Duru and Franklyne Edede.
Only two flags of the party are taped to the burglary of the building to indicate that it is a party office.
The Independent National Electoral Commission recognised the national headquarters of the party is located at Wuse, Zone 5, Abuja.
Nwosu, who is the leader of the five-man faction, said that members of the National Working Committee of his group would be announced in January next year.
According to Nwosu, the “Fresh PDP” is “emerging due to the imposition of a unity list on members on December 9, 2017.”
He said that his group was not happy with the outcome of the national convention which produced the new national officers for the party.
Asked how his group emerged, he said the members were the stakeholders of the party and the defeated candidates at the convention.
He, however, did not explain how he emerged as the leader of the group, but said that he was not elected.
It is being speculated that the group is being sponsored by some defeated candidates at the party convention.
However, one of the defeated chairmanship candidates, Prof. Tunde Adeniran, has disowned the group.
Adeniran, who spoke through the Director of his Campaign Organisation, Mr. Shehu Garban, in Abuja stated that anybody who had genuine grievances was free to express them but cautioned that his principal should not be linked to the group.
Speaking on the presence of a member of his campaign team in the aggrieved group, the former minister said he did not send anyone to the group.
“We do not know them. They don’t represent us and we have nothing to do with them. Whenever is there doesn’t represent us,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Governor of Ekiti State and the Chairman, Peoples Democratic Party’s Governors’ Forum and the National Chairman of the PDP, Uche Secondus, have said that those who have identified themselves as Fresh PDP members ought to have been arrested and jailed for disrupting the nation’s peace.
Fayose, while hosting Secondus who had come in company of other members of the party’s National Working Committee for the local government election rally coming up in Ado Ekiti on Thursday (today), said the Fresh PDP members were mere distractors who should be ignored.
According to a press statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Idowu Adelusi, the governor said, “In a civilised society those parading themselves as Fresh PDP members should have been clamped into jail. They are simply charlatans. I won’t be surprised and we are doing investigations to know those who are behind them.
“In a society like Nigeria, where we need a virile opposition, we need to continually put the government of the day on its toes for them to know that Nigeria is greater than all of us, some miscreants would just issue press statement and say they are a splinter group or whatever they call themselves.
“I urge Nigerians to ignore them. When I saw them on the Internet, they were faceless people I could not recognise, so they remain a set of jobless people and miscreants.”
Also, the national leadership of the party said that the PDP was not moved by what it called the “comical act of some individuals who make outlandish claims in the media regarding the party.”
According to a statement issued by the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan, the party insisted that its house remains intact.
The statement read in part, “We will however not be responsible or respond to any person or groups of individuals who decide to allow themselves to be used by forces from another political party in a laughable and childish attempt to distract us.”
