PDP BOT: How Ali saved Obasanjo from planned removal

Idowu Samuel, Abuja - 30.01.2008

some members of the Poeples Democratic Party (PDP) under the aegis of G-21 would have succeeded in laying the basis for the removal of former President Olusegun Obasanjo as the Chairman, Board of Trustees (BOT) of the party, during Monday’s NEC meeting of the party, if not for the quick intervention of the party’s National Chairman, Ahmadu Ali.

Members of the G-21, led by former Senate President, Chief Ken Nnamani, had earlier forwarded a memo to the National Headquarters of the PDP, calling for the amendment of the party’s constitution.

All the members of the G-21 had turned out for the NEC meeting, specifically to push for the amendment of the party’s constitution, with a view to removing the clauses that gave former President Obasanjo the leverage to emerge as the party’s BOT chairman.

The group, the Nigerian Tribune learnt, had held a pre-NEC meeting at the conference room at the PDP National Secretariat, where the removal of Obasanjo as the BOT chairman was discussed.

The PDP chairman, according to party officials who spoke with the Nigerian Tribune and other members of the PDP executive prevented Nnamani who was supported by Chief Tony Anenih and some former members of the National Assembly, including Anyim Pius Anyim, from tabling the amendment of the party constitution.

Nnamani was said to have drawn the attention of the party’s chieftains to the memo which members of his group had forwarded to the party on the amendment of the PDP constitution, arguing that the last amendments that were made in the constitution under the administration of Chief Obasanjo were self-serving rather than promoting the tenets of democracy.

Ali, it was learnt, did not allow the former Senate President to make a free presentation as he was said to have interrupted him consistently as he made a case for constitution amendment.