Daniel Kicks Over BoT’s Decision To Knock Him Out Of PDP National Chairmanship Race

A former Governor of Ogun State, Otunba Gbenga Daniel, has objected to the decision of the Peoples Democratic Party to knock him and others out of the national chairmanship race.
Daniel, a frontline aspirant, said the decision was not in consonance with democratic principles.

In a statement by Steve Oliyide, the Media Consultant of the Otunba Gbenga Daniel Campaign Organization, Daniel said: “Our attention has been drawn to a document endorsing 3 Aspirants for the PDP National Chairmanship race, without OGD, purportedly signed by Chief Oyedokun on behalf of the SW caucus of the BOT of our Party ahead of the Dec 9 National convention.
“Our teaming Supporters should kindly disregard such documents which can best be described as the personal opinion of the Writer and it’s clearly not well thought out, if at all such a document is authenticated.
“Smarting from a disastrous electoral outing in the last two and a half years, our party is just recovering from acts of impunity and unilateral actions like this and never again do we pray for such as we move on to repackage the Party.
“For the avoidance of doubt, Otunba Gbenga Daniel is currently on a Nationwide tour of all the 36 states chapters of our Party consulting with Leaders and potential delegates, preaching the gospel of internal democracy and retuning the Party to the people at the grassroots.
“He is currently in Kano having earlier visited Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Jigawa and Kano this week.
“He remains firmly in the race and he is probably the aspirant to beat in this race.
“Our supporters nationwide are therefore asked to kindly ignore documents like this, as we endeavour to rebuild and put our democratic practice on sound footing once again.”

One of the BoT members, Alhaji Shuaibu Oyedokun, had in a statement on Saturday said the group had pruned the number of aspirants to three.
Those endorsed were a former Minister of Sports and Special Duties and former Provost of the Federal College of Education (Special), Oyo, Prof. Taoheed Adedoja; a former Deputy National Chairman (South) of the party, Chief Bode George; and a former Minister of Education, Prof. Tunde Adeniran.

Shut out from the race are a former Governor of Oyo State, Senator Rashidi Ladoja; a former Governor of Ogun State, Chief Gbenga Daniel; a former National Secretary of the party, Prof. Wale Oladipo; the party governorship candidate in the 2015 elections in Lagos State, Jimi Agbaje; and Akin-Deko Akintayo, who is from Ondo State.
The BoT said it picked George to represent the Ogun-Lagos axis, while Adedoja is to stand for the election for Osun-Oyo and Adeniran to represent Ekiti-Ondo.
The caucus said its action was based on the numerous calls and wise counsel from several quarters to prune the contestants to a manageable size.

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