PDP
By Desmond Ejibas
Port Harcourt, March 13, 2018 (NAN) Mrs Olufunke Agbola, Women Leader, Johannesburg, South Africa chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has urged the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) to give the Diaspora chapters opportunity to contribute to its growth.
Agbola told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the telephone from Johannesburg on Tuesday that the Diaspora chapters could contribute to the party’s fortunes in the 2019 general elections.
She said that the chapter had written a letter to Prince Uche Secondus, the party’s National Chairman on giving the Diaspora chapter a sense of belonging.
“The PDP in the Diaspora is one child that must not be ignored or considered as stillborn because we are very solid on the ground.
“Our roles in branding and re-branding our great party continentally and worldwide cannot go unnoticed. We are candidly seeking for the national body’s recognition which we so well deserve,’’ she said.
Agbola said that Secondus was in a proper position to implement the gesture since he belonged to a new and younger generation of the party’s leadership.
“The reasons for this request is because among the Diaspora PDP family are young politicians, technocrats, and professionals in every field of endeavour whose yearnings for a better Nigeria is like nature’s mark that cannot be erased.
“These men and women are ready and willing and able to sacrifice their juicy and lucrative businesses and jobs to get fully involved in the rebuilding of our fatherland, if the opportunity is granted,’’ Agbola said.
The women leader called for the amendment of the party’s constitution to accommodate Diaspora members and chapters in the affairs of the party.
She appealed to Secondus to make the party the first to adopt such convention in its activities.
According to Agbola, PDP is the party that planted democracy seed in the country and will be historical to evolve new democratic reforms.
“Democratic reforms will see the kind of analog politicians and politicking we have today in the country become history.
“It will further make Nigeria the first African democracy to walk the lines of the conventional European Democratic trends where youths have taken leadership in countries like France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Austria,’’ she said.
Agbola said the party’s members in South Africa were solidly behind Secondus and assured that members would lend assistance when called upon.
“The key thing is that we can do better collectively than divisively apart,’’ she added.
NAN reports that PDP ruled the country for 16 years upon return to its third democracy in 1999 after a 16-year period of military interregnum spanning from 1983 to 1999 when former President Olusegun Obasanjo was sworn-in. (NAN)
DES/ENN/PDE
===========
(Editing by Edwin Nwachukwu/Peter Ejiofor)