Tambuwal and Ortom meet as PDP woo disgruntled governors

Samuel Ortom, the governor of Benue State, met with Aminu Tambuwal, the counterpart from Sokoto State, on Sunday in Makurdi.

The conference was a step in the process to end the Peoples Democratic Party’s internal turmoil.

While Ortom is one of the five PDP governors who presently demand the resignation of the party’s national chairman, Iyorchia Ayu, Tambuwal is the director-general of the campaign council for the party’s presidential nominee, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.

Ortom said that Tambuwal had requested the Sunday gathering.

He said, “This meeting is at his instance. We have discussed quite many issues, including the division in the PDP; the G-5 which I am a member. He is here principally to see how we can team up and work together as a party.

“I have told him he is welcome, we are together, we are members of the PDP. But I have said that the leadership of this party has failed to take advantage of the challenges of the party and make it stronger.

“From when we held our convention, instead of the leadership deploying its internal dispute resolution mechanism to look at the grievances that arose as a result of the primaries, no matter how stupid they were, they have failed to do this.
Rather it is arrogance, nonchalant attitude; and nobody has cared to reach out to us even when we voiced out that things were not going on well.”

If the committee heeds his suggestions, Ortom expressed hope that the problem will be handled quickly and thanked Tambuwal for the visit.

Tambuwal, for his part, said that the effort to end the party conflict was still a work in progress.

The governor said,“Even in our families, we have reasons to disagree and agree. At some other times when you have such disagreement and you come back together, you bond stronger and wax stronger.
So, it is a work in progress and we have met several times but we are working to bring everybody together to work for this party. That is the mission of my being here in Makurdi.”

“He (Ortom) is a principled person on the issues we are handling and we have had a very strong conversation with him of course, I will engage with the rest of our colleagues and our leaders to see how best we can come back together as one family and work towards making sure that the PDP comes out stronger and win the election of 2023.”