2023: ‘Assure us you’ll resign after general elections,’ PDP BoT tells Ayu

The board of trustees (BoT) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has told the national chairman of the party, Iyorchia Ayu, to assure members that he will resign after the 2023 general election.

The advice to Ayu was part of the resolutions the PDP BoT reached on Friday, October 14, at a meeting in Abuja.

The BoT, led by Adolphus Wabara, had recently embarked on “reconciliatory visits” to aggrieved members of the party, especially those in the camp of Nyesom Wike, governor of Rivers state.

Wike and his supporters have been demanding the resignation of Ayu after former vice-president Atiku Abubakar won the party’s presidential ticket.

The call for Ayu’s resignation is on the grounds that the national chairman and the presidential candidate of the party cannot come from the same region.

However, some members of the party had rejected the call for Ayu to resign, saying that the national chairman can only resign after the presidential election in February 2023 if Atiku wins.

Wike, on Wednesday, October 12, said that the national chairman must step down before the presidential election, adding that it would be “foolish” to ask Ayu to resign after the polls have been concluded.

Wabara, while reading the statement issued after the meeting on Friday, said that the “BoT called on all party leaders and persons close to them to desist from making further inflammatory remarks or press interviews.”

According to him, all leaders of the party have been asked to “match words with action and where commitments are made, to unconditionally fulfil same.”

Wabara also said that the BoT “urged the national chairman as an eminent leader, to give a firm assurance that he will resign his position after the 2023 election,” according to The Cable.

“In the same vein, the BoT chairman has been authorised to offer apologies on behalf of all members who feel maligned or aggrieved by the public statements made by its members nationwide,” the statement reads.

“The BoT also called on the presidential candidate to review its membership of the presidential campaign council, and other advisory appointments to make it all-inclusive.”