Zoning won’t split PDP – BoT chair

The Chairman, Board of Trustees (BoT) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Walid Jibrin, has said stakeholders won’t allow the zoning of key offices in the country to break up the party.

He said this after a meeting of the BoT at the PDP National Headquarters in Abuja where non statutory members of the board to serve for three years were equally inaugurated.

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“We are not talking about zoning of the Offices of the President, Vice President, Senate President of Speaker of the House of Representatives yet. Zoning can mar or destroy our party but by the grace of God, we will not allow it to happen.

“What I can say is that we should never be personal because when you want to be personal, the issue of disunity will come,” he said.

Senate Jibrin stressed that the parley was part of the board’s continuous commitment to bring peace and unity to the party.

The BoT chairman, while speaking on the tenure of the board amid reports of plan to change the leadership, said he was constitutionally elected and had only spent three from his five years.

He said going by the constitution, it is only the BoT itself that will elect its chairman and secretary.

“The constitution says the chairman and secretary must come either from the North or the South. Today, I come from the North and Adolphus Wabara, the secretary of the BoT, comes from the South. The constitution also gives the chairman and the secretary opportunity to serve for five years only and there is no re-election.

“By God’s grace, we have already spent three years and we are only waiting for the next two years.”

He said with the inauguration, the board now has 98 full membership.

On Wednesday’s local government elections in his home State of Nasarawa, Jibrin described the exercise as “hell, rigged and undemocratic.”

The BoT chairman said he had enjoined his people to remain calm and not to quarrel.