About 60 Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) members in the House of Representatives have threatened to leave the party if acting National Chairman Umar Ililya Damagum does not resign immediately.

The lawmakers accused Damagun of handing over the party’s leadership structure to outsiders.

They also accused him of doctoring the caretaker committee members’ lists in Rivers State and 10 other states by infusing members of other parties with the aim of killing the main opposition.

Ugochinyere Ikenga, who led five other lawmakers to address reporters at the National Assembly yesterday, spoke on behalf of 60 PDP lawmakers out of the over 100 in the Green Chamber.

Ugochinyere said those at the media briefing were members of a coalition of opposition lawmakers in the PDP.

The lawmaker representing Ideato Federal Constituency of Imo State accused Damagum, who had allegedly been engaging in anti-party activities, of also selling the party “for a plate of porridge”.

He insisted that the acting national chairman must resign immediately unless he was bent on destroying the party.

Ugochinyere said the coalition was aware of plans, ongoing mobilisation and lobbying of some PDP National Executive Council (NEC) members by another party’s loyalists “masquerading as PDP members to issue a kangaroo vote of confidence in Damagum” to enable the other party continue its hold on the PDP to destroy main opposition.

The lawmaker said instead of allowing the Northcentral to produce the acting chairman, as required by the PDP constitution pending the conduct of a convention or the resolution of a pending litigation, the outside forces working with Damagum wanted to affirm him as the national chairman at the NEC meeting to set the main opposition on the path of irredeemable damnation.

He said if Damagum failed to step down and the lists of the Rivers State PDP Caretaker Committee and those of other 10 states were allowed to stand, the 60 lawmakers would jump ship, severe all relationships with the party and seek new political alliances elsewhere.

Ugochinyere alleged that it was because Damagum was in bed with another party that he kept quiet while 27 members of Rivers State House of Assembly elected on the platform of PDP left the party and approved plots to impeach Governor Siminalayi Fubara.

The lawmaker also said his coalition had credible intelligence of a plot to secure a secret ex parte that would attempt to legalise the extension of the soon-to-expire tenure of local government chairmen in Rivers State.

He said they were also informed about another prayer in the suit seeking to order the Accountant General of the Federation and the Federal Ministry of Finance to seize the legitimate local government allocation of Rivers State.

The lawmaker urged the PDP NEC to review the sources of generating finance for the party to pay its national secretariat workers and to discharge all other responsibilities and investigate the allegation that internal supporters of another party were funding the PDP. (The Nation)

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