Kabiru Tanimu Turaki has defended his emergence as the national chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), stressing that the process adhered to established party zoning arrangements and democratic principles despite criticisms of factionalism and claims of internal defiance.

In an interview with ARISE NEWS on Tuesday, Turaki said the PDP has consistently followed a pattern of leadership selection that ensures fairness across regions, highlighting the party’s National Zoning Committee, which zoned the presidential ticket to the southern part of Nigeria and the national chairmanship to the northern part.

“Now, the Northern Caucus made a lot of argument and persuasive argument for that matter. It was agreed unanimously that the national chairmanship of the party should be micro-zoned to the northwestern zone of the country. The process that led to my selection as a consensus candidate is not something that is unique. It’s not something that is unprecedented.”

Turaki explained that four individuals initially expressed interest in contesting the national chairmanship from the Northwest including himself, former Governor Ahmed Makarfi of Kaduna State, and Governor Ibrahim Skekarau of Kano State. Both governors later accepted the consensus decision that Turaki would be the candidate. “Any other person who was dissatisfied or who was still insistent on wanting to contest was free to do so. But if you want to contest, then you must contest within the parameters set by the party. In other words, you must go and buy a form within the terms stipulated by the National Executive Committee of the party, number two. You must fill that form and submit it within the window allowed by the programme of the party, number three. You must subject yourself to screening exercise and so on and so forth.”

Turaki dismissed allegations of unfair practices during the expression of interest process, explaining that all candidates followed the same procedure. “It is uncharitable for anybody to say that anyone was asked to go to Adamawa, I bought my phone at Legacy Labs. And every other candidate bought his or her phones there. So, it is uncharitable for anybody to say anyone was asked to go to Adamawa and do so.”

On internal zoning arrangements, Turaki said the PDP ensures equitable representation among the northern zones. “Zoning had been done. So, Jigawa, Kano, they have their own. Katsina and Kaduna, they have their own. Sokoto, Kebbi and Zamfara have their own, which is the question I’m holding now as the national chairman.”

Addressing the expulsion of high-profile party members, Turaki defended the decision as a legal necessity and a way to assist those individuals in joining other parties. “All right, I’ve been taking decisions at the highest level of confidence of the party, which is our national convention, and they’ve been expelled. And we know that our laws frame that double membership, dual membership of any person to a political party. And we knew that not being members of PDP, probably, if they still want to play politics, they may want to go to other political parties. We wanted to assist them. We don’t want a situation where they will approach a political party to say, we want to register as members of this political party.’ So, what we did, by giving them those certificates of expulsion, is to assist them. When they go to register with any other political party, they have something to show to those political parties. We are no longer members of PDP. We have been expelled. This is evidence of my expulsion. So, if anything, I think they should be grateful for what we’ve done.”

Turaki also justified his call on the international community to monitor Nigerian democratic processes after clashes with opposing factions during party meetings. “We feel that America, as a country, should have more than a passing interest in democratic practise anywhere in the world, especially where a country says we are practising presidential democracy. We are only asking them, because Nigeria is such that you cannot force a one-party system on us. That is the reality on the ground. That is what we said. And everybody who saw what happened that day saw that we were victims, we were attacked, we were presented.”

“Over 100 canisters of tear gas were fired at us, including those serving governors who have immunity. But did we react? We didn’t. We persisted. We insisted that we had a right to walk into our office and then carry out our legitimate business.”

He also addressed ongoing factional disputes within the party. “If they want to come back, let them apologise. We, as new leadership of PDP, are desirous of getting more and more people into the party, not driving people away. But the party got to do what got to be done because we must survive as a political party. Nyeso Wike is a personal and close friend of mine. But when it comes to the issues of survival of PDPs, we will do anything under my control to ensure that PDPs survive, because the responsibility has been given to me to make sure that we do that.”

Turaki concluded saying that the party remains committed to following both legal and constitutional frameworks. “Now, it is wrong for anybody to say that PDP is functionalised. There’s no function of PDP. We had problems like any other political party. Since when we lost election in 2015, anything that any political party will go through, we’ve gone through as a PDP, as a party. We’ve learned our lessons. But we’re now working efforts to now put all those things behind us while learning a lot of lessons from those experiences that we’ve had.” (AriseNews TV)

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