The Chairman of the Lagos State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Dr. Adetokunbo Pearce, has said the role of the party’s state chapter will be clarified after the state assembly, which is yet to be determined.
Pearce, a former member of the Atiku Abubakar 2023 Presidential Election Council, disclosed this in an interview in Lagos on Saturday.
The PDP is facing an internal crisis among party leaders and state executives, which led to its disastrous defeat in the 2023 general elections.
Pearce said state leaders have launched three different committees to help the party find a direction forward for the 2027 general election.
He said in an interview with NAN that the Lagos State PDP is currently run by three committees to bring its members together.
“The PDP national convention is about to begin and this will help the party find its way forward. In the PDP, the status quo remains the same.
“PDP is currently running three committees that were established about three to four months ago,” he said.
Mr Pearce listed the committees as being the Disciplinary Committee headed by Tai Benedict, the party’s state deputy leader, and the Reconciliation Committee chaired by former PDP state chairman Alhaji Muritala Asholobi.
Pearce added that the Finance Committee has been placed under his leadership. The leader said that despite the infighting within the party, the structure of the PDP in the state remained intact across constituencies and local government areas.
Pearce said all 20 local government chairmen and ward leaders of the PDP were within the party’s main structure.
Speaking on the poor performance of the PDP in the 2023 governorship election, Pearce said the development was the fault of the national leadership of the party and the failure of the governorship candidate to bring in elders.
“That was an unusual election in the history of the PDP. Never before has there been such a bad situation, with the gubernatorial candidate getting 5 percent and the presidential candidate getting 6 percent.
“What happened in the last election was that the national leadership made the mistake of going into the primaries and leaving it up to the delegates who they knew at the time to be the leaders of the election.
“The national leadership has handed over the selection of delegates to the party’s gubernatorial candidate, Dr. Abdul Aziz Adiran (Jandole).
“However, Jandole had just joined the PDP and it was only about six to seven months later that he had the opportunity to select delegates for the PDP primaries in Lagos State.
“So the party was in turmoil. That’s what happened in 2023. The party’s organizations in the districts and local government areas did not work because the organizations rebelled against the imposition.” That’s what happened. ,” Pierce said.
