President Buhari Shuns Delta For Taraba As PDP Kicks
President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday has put off his visit to Delta state for a supposed stakeholders meeting.
The meeting tailored to reconcile the warring factions in the party ahead of the governorship and State Assembly elections.
The President was said to have gone to Taraba State where his party is also having crisis was scheduled to be in Delta, Akwa-Ibom and Taraba states today.
In his place, the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo was in Warri to meet with the party stakeholders at the PTI Conference Centre where the leaders of All Progressive Congress, APC, in the state received him.
Buhari was expected in Warri for a “thank you visit” after he won reelection contest and to reconcile the party leaders who have been at each other’s jugular ahead the governorship and State Assembly elections this Saturday 9, March 2019.
Meanwhile, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Delta
State chapter has described the visit as a plot by the APC to perfect plans to rig the Saturday governorship and state Assembly elections.
State Publicity Secretary of PDP, Dr Ifeanyi Osuoza in a statement while reacting to the visit said that the trip is in bad taste, as the party supporters and Deltans, in general, are wondering why the president has always limited his visits to a microscopic Warri and ignoring the larger areas of the State.
The statement reads: “However, while we of the PDP Delta State will not get involved in the internal belligerent matters of a party that lives in factional disharmony, we urge the President not to get involved in sinister contrivances by working to use his office as President, to scheme and manipulate the electoral process.
“We say this because of March 9, 2019
Governorship and State House of Assembly elections, as we have it on good authority that Buhari’s trip is not altruistic, and has nothing to do with the good and progress of Delta State.
“Already, the entire Delta State is abuzz with claims and insinuations and it is being openly said that the President and indeed the whole gamut of well-known election manipulators and hatchet men in the national APC leadership, are visiting Delta State ostensibly to perfect an APC rigging plan and subvert the electoral process and the ultimate democratic decisions of Deltans who have sworn to return Governor Ifeanyi Okowa for a well-deserved second term and vote for all the PDP candidates in the March 9, 2019 State Assembly elections.
“It is indeed a thing of shame that President Buhari will ignore other very important and urgent State matters to come to Warri to be at the head of a despicable scheme to manipulate and swing votes in favour of the unpopular APC and its candidates.
“We condemn the president’s insensitivity to the sensibilities of the people of Delta State who have taken PDP as their party. We also decry the shameful, slimy drive of Buhari and his detestable mission to use the power of State to secretly get the various agencies of the Federal Government, namely, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the police, the military and other security agencies to intimidate and harass PDP supporters, voters and subvert their democratic will and foist on the State an unpopular APC and its candidate”.
