I’ll resign as PDP chairman if… – Sheriff

Claimant to the office of the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Ali Modu Sheriff, has restated his readiness to give up his claim as along as his rival in the National Caretaker Committee of the party, Senator Ahmed Makarfi also dissolves the committee.

Speaking while receiving some members of the party from the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in his office in Abuja on Wednesday, he said this was necessary to give room for the emergence of an independent leadership.

Sheriff added that he was willing to resume negotiations over the leadership crisis in the party.

He said however that if the warring factions were unable to reach a common ground, he would be willing to abide by the decision of the court now being awaited.

The former Borno State governor stated that he had done his best to return PDP to the grassroots but had suffered blackmail in the process.

He said: “Permit me therefore to state that I have in all sincerity tried to resolve this party crisis. I have offered that both the caretaker committee and the NWC be dissolved to give way for a new Independent leadership.

“But the caretaker committee has refused to agree to anything except recognise them and let the caretaker committee run the party till 2018. We have therefore resigned our fate to the decision of their lordships of the Court of Appeal and Supreme Courts. However, we are ready to return to the negotiation table today if Senator Makarfi sees reason to do so.

“I have been blackmailed to the extent that I am alleged to be sponsored by the APC to build a one party system. Contradictorily, I have been accused at the same time of staying on to stage my emergence as the presidential candidate of the PDP.

“This is the extent to which the illegal caretaker committee can go to hold on to power. Blackmail has been their stock in trade.

“My detractors go to the extent of alluding to the fact that I sponsored Boko Haram. This is in spite of the fact that Boko Haram was completely annihilated under my tenure as Governor of Borno State.”

Sheriff assured that the PDP belonged to all Nigerians and elected members must be accountable to the people.

He regretted that politicians had bought their way to power and consequently have no loyalty to the people, saying that unless the situation was reversed, multiparty democracy was doomed in the country.

The former governor denied that he had influenced the judiciary in order to get a favorable judgement on the leadership crisis, noting that he had no wherewithal to do so with a judiciary which he said was respectable.

On the recent Rivers state re-run election, he said he was awaiting the report of a committee set up to assess the conduct of the exercise before declaring his position on the outcome.