PDM Is Doomed – Anenih

Chief Tony Anenih, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has predicted said that the newly registered Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM) was a political deception and that it would not survive.

Mr. Anenih also called on his followers to ignore the new political party and focus on the task of building a stronger and more formidable PDP.

“I hereby wish to urge those who look up to me for guidance in this circumstance to remain steadfast with me in the task of building a much more united and  formidable PDP and to discountenance the registration and treat it as a political trickery which will not survive the test of time,” the Chairman stated.

Mr. Anenih compared the PDM with a pressure group within the PDP, added that the new party was indeed different from the movement that worked with other parties to form the PDP in 1998.

The Chairman emphasized that the PDM, which was formed under the leadership of the late Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, was not the same political movement that was registered recently as a political party by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Mr. Anenih also stated in an e-mail on Sunday, August 25, 2013:
Reports about the registration of Peoples Democratic Movement as a political party by the Independent National Electoral Commission have inundated the polity; and because of my leading role in the formation and nurturing of the movement, concerned members of the movement have contacted me to confirm if it was our PDM that has witnessed the transformation.

After in-depth investigations and extensive consultations with a wide spectrum of the membership and leadership of the PDM, which is just like a pressure group within the Peoples Democratic Party, I consider it moral to use this medium to clarify that the PDM, which some persons, purporting to be interim leaders, secretly and mischievously promoted and succeeded in registering with INEC to operate as a political party, is not our PDM that worked with other political associations to form the PDP in 1998.

For the avoidance of doubt, the PDM, which we collectively envisioned under the leadership of the late General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua (retd.), remains an integral part of the PDP, whose Board of Trustees, I currently chair by the grace of God and the consensus of founding fathers and leaders of our great party.
Mr. Anenih also called on the membership of the PDM working for the PDP and its government not to panic, saying the movement was not meant to be registered as a political party.

But the PDM in its reaction described by Mr. Anenih as the sponsor of the negative propaganda against the new party.

Mr. Alaba Yusuf, the Media Adviser to the Interim National Chairman of the PDP, said that it was impossible for anybody to pull down the PDM whose time, according to him, had come.
He challenged Mr. Anenih to solve the crisis rocking the PDP rather than concerning himself with the affairs of the new party.

“The masquerade behind the anti-PDM propaganda has been unmasked. Chief Anenih’s statement is a positive advertisement for PDM and what it stands for.
“There’s no turning back the hand of time. PDM is an idea whose time has come.”