PDP prays for Buhari as caretaker committee takes over

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday conducted
special prayers for the good health of ‎President Muhammadu Buhari, pleading with God Almighty to grant him speedy recovery.

The president on Monday travelled abroad for a 10-day rest during which he will seek medical attention for a recurring ear-infection.

The party which is emerging from an internal crisis ‎ also prayed for the recovery of the country’s ailing economy.

At a ceremony for the official takeover of the running of the party by the National Caretaker Committee appointed at the May 21, 2016 national convention in Port Harcourt, the party expressed concern about what it called a growing pull by centrifugal forces ‎in which the unity of the country is increasingly being threatened as well as increasing the spate of killings.

It also lamented that the country is sliding into a recession and vowed to reverse the trend if voted back into power in 2019.

Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, who offered the prayers for President Buhari stated: “Let me quickly remind all of us that our president is at present not feeling well and has been flown abroad for treatment. So, I will like to invite you to rise, let us say one minute of prayer for his quick recovery.”

Charging the party on the task ahead, Ekweremadu said: “Our dear party men and women, this is a new day and a great day for our party. What we are witnessing today is a PDP with a new spirit: spirit of togetherness, love. We are going to give this new spirit a new body.

“We must apologise for certain institutions and aspects of our national life. We are worried and sorry about the dwindling fortunes of our currency. But we want to assure our currency that by 2019, you will be strong again. Our economy, by the time we left in 2015 was the strongest in Africa. Today we sympathise with that economy. But we want to assure our economy that you will be strong again not only in Africa but in the whole world.”

On the increasing job losses and the implication on poverty, the Deputy Senate President said: “We want to tell our people who are losing their jobs in banks and construction companies that by the time PDP returns to power in 2019 the story will change.

“To the people of Nigeria, there is still hope. With the PDP you are seeing today, there is hope for our country. And we believe we can endure the hardship of the three more years coming between now and 2019 because there is light at the end of the tunnel.
“Our promise to the people of Nigeria is that we are going to produce the next president of this country in 2019 based on a superior argument. We want our president to succeed but we believe that we have better things to offer to Nigeria because we have done that in the past and we will do it again.”

The Chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum and Ondo State Governor, Olusegun Mimiko, in his comments expressed concern that forces against the unity of Nigeria were getting stronger even as he noted that elements that should strengthen democracy like civil societies were gradually being phased out.

Mimiko said: “These are definitely happy times for PDP but paradoxically, unhappy times for the nation. In all my time in this country as an adolescent and as a politically active adult, dying has never been this cheap.

“Beheading, dying has never come to the forefront of national discourse. It seems that everyday you open the newspaper, you see people dying here, beheaded there and people carting them away to secret graves.”

He lamented what he described as the mismanagement of the affairs of the nation which he believed was responsible for the threats to the country’s unity.