PDP: Ex-President Jonathan votes for political solution

Receives Dickson’s Committee report

The Guardian NG>>> Former President Goodluck Jonathan, yesterday, said a political solution remains the best option to tackling political issues in political parties, particularly the ongoing crisis in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Jonathan spoke, when he received members of PDP Peace and Reconciliation Committee led by Governor Seriake Dickson, in his country home at Otuoke, Ogbia local government council of Bayelsa State.

While commending the committee for the good work done, especially for going round the country to meet with key stakeholders and leaders for the return of peace to the PDP, the immediate past President urged contending parties to embrace compromise and negotiations as a way out.

He said Dickson and his Committee deserve every encouragement, even as he expressed reservations over the use of courts to settle purely political matters, stressing that a political solution would ensure a win-win outcome for the warring groups.

“ I believe a political solution remains the best means of resolving the crisis in the party and that’s why the Dickson committee must be commended. No two parties go to court and come out smiling, especially for a political party like the PDP that’s in the opposition”, the former leader noted.

Giving instances of people who went to court and at the end, did not get the desired result, Dr. Jonathan maintained that courts should ordinarily have no business deciding who should be chairman of a political party.

He therefore called on the warring camps to submit themselves to a political solution, saying that would finally put to rest the protracted crisis.

While presenting the report, Governor Dickson told the former President, that Bayelsa has benefited substantially from the PDP, saying it was the only platform that has given the position of President to a minority state.

Even as he restated Bayelsa and the Ijaw nation’s indebtedness to the PDP, the governor said it is a thing of pride to work for the final resolution of the crisis.

Earlier, in his introductory remarks before the presentation, a member of the PDP Board of Trustees (BoT) and former minister of the FCT, Abba Gana, praised the remarkable leadership quality of governor Dickson as a peacemaker, which he said helped pushing through the peace process.

Gana, who commended former President Jonathan for conceding defeat to President Muhammadu Buhari at the time he did, noted that that singular move restored peace and averted the looming crisis that would have consumed the nation.

He noted that such a leader, who could achieve that feat effortlessly, could even do much more to restore peace in the PDP.