Crisis: Kwara PDP inaugurates elders committee

From Olanrewaju Lawal, Ilorin

The Chairman of the Kwara State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Akogun Iyiola Oyedepo, has tasked the party’s elders committee to work towards uniting the party members in the state ahead of the 2015 general elections.

 Oyedepo  stated this in Ilorin at the weekend while inaugurating the 61 – man State Elders’ Committee of the party headed by Senator Haliru Kaima.

The chairman asked the elders to put an end to the lingering crisis bedeviling the leadership of the party in Ilorin West Local Government Area which has recently been subject of litigation.

Oyedepo called on the elders to see that party flag bearers especially the governorship candidate, emerged without tearing the party apart or leading to defection of major stakeholders to another party.

He implored the elders to help raise fund for the party in order to enable it face the challenges of winning the polls stressing that experience of his exco inaugurated few months ago has shown that PDP in Kwara needs an average of N500,000.00 daily as running cost.

The chairman said allowing  moneybags to dominate and dictate to the party would amount to returning the party to square one and making a mess of the members’ freedom and struggle aimed at politically liberating the state from the yoke of ‘one man rule’.

He said the state exco has given the Elders’ Committee leeway to elect its exco as part of processes of strengthening internal democracy in the party and as a challenge to the elders to effectively supervise the forthcoming party primaries without aftermath crises.

In his remarks after the inauguration, Senator Baba Zuruk, a member of the Elders Committee from Kwara North said; “when you have elders in place things would be straightened and when you have elders with manners, things hardly go wrong”.