PDP: State Chairmen back Damagum-led NWC, give party clean bill of health

By Folorunso Alagbede, Abuja

Chairmen of States’ chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have expressed confidence in the ability of the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party, under the acting National Chairmanship of Amb Umar Ilya Damagum to wade through the problems facing the party and position it well for winning ways ahead of 2027.
Contrary to the perception in the political space that PDP is losing grounds to the ruling All Progressives Congress, the chairmen gave their party a clean bill of health.
Mr Austin Nwachukwu, Imo State PDP Chairman and Interim Chairman, PDP Chairmen’s Forum gave the assurance on Wednesday while addressing journalists at the party’s headquarters after the chairmen met with the NWC.
Nwachukwu said that the meeting Wednesday at the party’s headquarters, Abuja, was not called to endorse the acting National Chairman, Ambassador Ilya Damagum but a familiarisation meeting of the chairmen most of whom were recently elected at state congresses with members of the party’s National Working Committee.
Speaking on what transpired at the meeting, Nwachukwu said “the meeting is simply to familiarize ourselves with the National Working Committee. Recall that few months back, a lot of state congresses were held from wards, local government to the state.
“The NWC deemed it feet to gather all of us in Abuja to enable us know each other. It is essentially to familiarize ourselves with the NWC and those of them whose tenure are still running and will be running out next year.
“We also discussed about zonal congresses, the forms are out and those people that feel like contesting can go through their zonal offices to purchase the forms. We harped on unity among members of the party and across board”, he said.
He denied suspicion that the meeting discussed the upcoming National Executive Committee (NEC), saying nothing like that was discussed.
He added the neither did the meeting discussed passing a vote of confidence on Damagum.
Asked about the state of the party, the interim Chairman of the Forum said the fortune of PDP is not going down despite losing two governorship elections within three months.
His words, “You know the elections that the ruling party conduct now, you know what they do. We want to clear that erroneous impressions that the fortunes of the party is diminishing each day, it is not. It is looking stronger into the new dispensation.
“What you may call crisis in the party is just cosmetic. They are doing their work, they are all intact. You can see all of them in the meeting. So I don’t see where the crisis you are talking about is coming from. Social media hype, is that where the problems in the party is being discussed?
“We are here today, we didn’t see anybody coming to accuse the NWC of anything or that this is the issue that we should look at,” he said.
Earlier at the opening ceremony, acting National Chairman of PDP, Ambassador Damagum said the meeting was necessary to put the men at the helm of party affairs in the 36 states on the right footing.
The acting National Chairman said “this is not an unusual meeting. We’ve had this kind of meetings before. This is not the first time. For the record, I want to make it very clear that this meeting was to interact with the state chairmen.