Barely a week after the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) took over the leadership of the party, it has handed over to a caretaker committee.

The committee at the helms of affair of Nigeria’s main opposition party is led by former Governor Ahmed Makarfi.

Markafi will now run the affairs of the party till a national convention is held to elect principal officers.

He revealed this after a marathon meeting of the board of trustees, serving, former governors of the party and their serving National Assembly members.

The meeting was initially scheduled to be a reconciliatory meeting of contending members of the Makarfi-led caretaker committee and the embattled chairman, Ali Modu Sheriff.

However, the party later confirmed that Sheriff had travelled before the meeting started.

Despite his absence at the meeting, the Board of Trustees insist that they were on track to unite the party and are presently putting structures in place to pilot the affairs of the party.

BOT chairman, Tom Ikimi and Professor Jerry Gana who is also a member of the Mantu-led concerned PDP stakeholders’ forum were both present at the meeting.

The PDP has been enmeshed in a leadership crisis, which culminated in two parallel conventions in Abuja and Port Harcourt last month.

The conventions produced three sets of leaders.

Earlier this month, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Walid Jibrin, told members of staff at PDP’s National Secretariat, Abuja, that both the party’s National Working Committee led by former Governor Ali Modu Sheriff and the Interim National Caretaker Committee led by former Governor Ahmed Makarfi had been sacked.

He said the takeover remains in place pending the resolution of the leadership tussle in the fold.

Jibrin said the action of the BOT became imperative in order not to allow vacuum in the party’s operations as well as to resolve the leadership crisis within the party.

The secretariat was sealed off by armed policemen on May 22 after the leadership tussle in the party worsened.

The PDP is Nigeria’s biggest opposition party, and was defeated only in May 2015 after holding power for 16 years. (tv360nigeria)

•Photo shows PDP Caretaker Chairman Ahmed Makarfi.