Senator Raji Rasaki tasks PDP members on support for Sheriff

CHAIRMAN of Senate Committee on Trade and Investment, Senator Fatimat Raji-Rasaki, has called for support for Alhaji Ali Modu Sheriff as the national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), saying his declaration by the courts marked an end to impunity in the party.

Senator Raji Rasaki, representing Ekiti Central in the Senate, stated this at the weekend while speaking at the end of a three-day information and communications technology (ICT) capacity building training she facilitated of various categories of 100 people of her constituency.

She held that the Court of Appeal judgment which affirmed Sheriff as the National Chairman of PDP was opportunity for the party to put its house in order ahead of the 2019 general election and straighten its rough edges.

According to her, the Court of Appeal judgment was a pointer to the fact that they all should rally round Sheriff, saying it had given the PDP a new lease of life and a sense of direction.

Raji Rasaki, who distributed laptops to the 100 beneficiaries of the training, expressed sadness over what she described as “impunity, lawlessness, violation of the party’s constitution and abuse of power” which she said “negatively affected the party’s fortunes.”

She said: .Sheriff has entered the secretariat and things will begin to take new shape. Now that Sheriff is the legal occupant of the PDP secretariat, any action or directive he gives in collaboration with his National Working Committee, is binding and has the force of law. From there, we will organise ourselves and things will take shape.

“But we must say that the impunity in our party must stop. You remember what happened at the Port Harcourt convention; how can you have a chairman who has the power to convoke a convention and you go behind  and change the whole thing in Port Harcourt?

“You want to hold election for positions that are not vacant? Their action in Port Harcourt led us to where we now find ourselves but now that the court has spoken on the matter, we are happy for it.”

On the training for her constituents, the senator said to make an impact in today’s world, one must be empowered in different areas of technology and we felt rather than to distribute motorcycles, we train them and give them computers to work with.

She urged the beneficiaries to put into practice what they had learnt on the three days and resist the temptation of selling the computers they had received.