PDP Crisis, Makarfi Was Never Asked To Step Down – Dickson

By Aaron Ossai with agency reports
The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP Reconciliation Committee Chairman, Governor Seriake Dickson, has clarified that his committee never asked the factional Chairman of the party’s National Caretaker Committee, Senator Ahmed Makarfi, to step down.
Dickson, in a statement by his Special Adviser on Media, Mr. Francis Agbo, denied the claim, saying he was misconstrued by a media organisation.
”The attention of the Chairman of the PDP Reconciliation Committee, Governor Seriake Dickson, has been drawn to a misleading headline: ‘PDP: Dickson urges Makarfi to step down’, which of course has elicited the reaction of Prince Dayo Adeyeye.
”To set the record straight, Governor Seriake Dickson spoke with a select group journalists last Saturday in Abuja on the PDP crisis but he never asked Makarfi to step down. In the said interview, Dickson as a peacemaker, stated his committee’s role in the reconciliation process and argued that for PDP to bounce back, leaders must make sacrifices.
”He consequently appealed to PDP leaders including Ali Modu Sheriff and Makarfi to make sacrifices for the revival of the party, wherein he said that the PDP is more than Sheriff and Makarfi and indeed any individual”, he explained.
The statement regretted that a reporter of a media organisation, who was at the interaction, misconstrued his appeal as “stepping aside”.

It said that Dickson had already written to the management of the news organisation to complain, stressing that it was curious that only the reporter from the organisation misconstrued the Governor’s interview as other media organisations in the interaction reported the governor correctly.
The statement further stated that in spite of the blackmail and propaganda scripted to distract Governor Dickson, the governor and his committee remained committed to reconciling all interests through dialogue, insisting that only a political solution woven around dialogue and sacrifices could engender true reconciliation.
It also added that the efforts of the committee had started yielding dividends, saying that the National Chairman, Senator Ali Modu Sheriff, had publicly written, on the request of the committee, to undertake that he would not contest election at the unity convention.
”Sheriff also said that he would not interfere in the selection of committee membership and that he had already written organs of the party for nominations into the convention committees.
”Sheriff further said that all party officials elected before the first botched Port Harcourt Convention remain valid. Lastly, all members of the party’s NWC, whose tenures are still running, have agreed to resign to pave the way for a unity convention”, it concluded.