By Folorunso Alagbede, Abuja
The new National Disciplinary Committee set up by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) can begin to make good impact towards facilitating the party’s rapid recovery from current crises by zeroing in on people like Senator Dino Melaye, a group, Coalition of PDP Professionals has said.
The group, in a statement issued in Abuja on Wednesday, urged the committee’s chairman, High Chief Tom Ikimi, the party’s acting National Chairman, Ambasador Umar Ilya Damagum and party leaders in Kogi state to consider sending an unequivocal message to all highly-placed but errant stakeholders by reviewing Senator Melaye’s recent utterances against PDP and rolling out appropriately severe sanctions.
In the statement issued by its President, Engineer Abdulraheem Ilyasu Garba and its Publicity Secretary, Mr. Gabriel Segun Adekoya, the group disclosed that the Coalition of PDP Professionals is working on a memoranda that will put the name of Senator Dino Melaye at the top of those to be recommended for the National Disciplinary Committee’s sanction.
It added that those who persistently feel no sense of remorse need a constant reminder for attitude change towards good behaviour.
The group said, “Few days ago, Melaye whimsically launched a mischievous accusation against the trio of acting National Chairman, Ambassador Damagum, PDP Secretary, Sam Anyanwu, and National Organizing Secretary, Umar Bature, alleging grievous wrongdoing all because of their resolve to adhere to PDP constitution and INEC’s guidelines.
“His (Melaye’s) regular resort to theatrics, along with misinformation, mudslinging and innuendos on social media and in real life all singularly recommend Dino Melaye for proper disciplinary sanctions.
“As for the Kogi PDP congress which the three PDP officials stopped from being manipulated, thereby triggering bitterness as well as vicious social media attacks on Damagum, Anyanwu, and Bature; party chairmen in 19 out of 21 LGAs firmly backed the PDP NWC position on the ad hoc congress but Melaye who appears to have sensed defeat asked his few supporters to abandon the exercise while subsequent efforts to get the PDP NWC leaders to re-write what happened at the congress failed.
“Turning down overtures for manipulation and upholding the very credible results of a free, fair process led to vengeful attacks on the credibility of Damagum, Anyanwu, and Bature who upheld the results; therefore, we solicit the invocation of necessary structures within the party to discipline Melaye, review past cases of his group’s predilection for cooking up crises within PDP and vigorously apply all fitting and proper sanctions that will serve as timely notice to others who may have a history of nurturing similar intentions for mischief within PDP,” the group stressed.
Harping on the need for the PDP Disciplinary Committee to also ensure a retrospective review of various expressions of Senator Melaye’s ego-driven tendencies, the group noted that, “he saw no cause to vilify PDP leadership in 2023 when they had to bend backwards on the ‘prodding and harassment’ of Atiku Abubakar to give him the governorship ticket–a situation that led to the defection of all but one of PDP’s governorship aspirants, and gale of defections in the party.
“He did not call these party leaders ‘transactional and commercial’ when the process was skewed in his favour but rather, the loquacious Senator who was singing the praises of Damagum, Anyanwu and Bature subsequently raised humongous amounts through PDP governors, NWC, influential party members, and other unsuspecting party faithful but took personal ownership of all, with the running mate and campaign teams and party polling agents being starved of funds prior to his departure for Abuja after avoiding voting in his own election,” the group added.
