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PDP Accuses Jonathan of Trading off Bayelsa

Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Elders’ Forum has accused former president Goodluck Jonathan of trading-off Bayelsa in the November 16 state’s governorship election and expressed worry over his conduct.

David Lyon of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was declared winner of the election which the PDP had insisted was rigged in favour of the Federal Government backed APC.

The PDP Elders’ Forum in a statement by its Chairman, Benson Odoko, in Yenagoa, criticised the former president for openly fraternising with the APC and noted that the Jonathan, by his actions, did not leave anybody in doubt that he was supporting the APC against the party that made him deputy governor, governor, vice president and president.

He said the former president, who visited President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa in Abuja for an undisclosed mission just before the election, kept his distance from the PDP and its members throughout the period of the campaigns leading to the election.

Odoko, who recalled that Jonathan also refused to congratulate the PDP governorship candidate, Douye Diri, who served him as commissioner for Sports when he was governor, said the forum was shocked when Jonathan and his wife donated the Aridolf Hotel to the APC as the operational contact point for visiting dignitaries of the party and as the venue for the party’s primary.

The forum’s chairman said what was even more stupefying was the visit to President Jonathan by APC leaders shortly after the election and another visit by the leader of the APC in the state, Timipre Sylva, the candidate of APC in the election, Lyon, and others to the Jonathans.

He said the argument that Jonathan worked against the PDP because his preferred candidate, Timi Alaibe, lost in the primary was a pathetic perfidy meant to cover up the real reasons for this betrayal against Bayelsans and Nigerians.

Odoko called on PDP national leadership to invoke disciplinary action against Jonathan for working against his party and openly celebrating an opposition victory against the party which made him president.