Plateau PDP Crisis: Jang Bars Caretaker Committee From Functioning

JOS, August 02, (THEWILL) - The Plateau State government has warned the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Caretaker Committee set up to oversee the affairs of the party in the state to stop functioning or face its wrath.

The committee was set up last year following the dissolution of the two factions of the party in the state.

The Plateau State Commissioner for information, Gregory Yenlong, who gave the warning, accused those trying to reopen the office of trying to destabilize the state to make it ungovernable.

The PDP Caretaker Committee headed by King Abu Shuluwa had reopened its office in Jos and was planning to hold a congress to elect new executive committee members for the party as directed by the national secretariat of the party.

But the Plateau State government which is backing the Professor Dakum Shown faction is seeing this as an attempt to prevent Jang from returning to the government house in 2011.

The state government had last year successfully sued the PDP and the Caretaker Committee, getting a court judgment which ruled that it was illegal to have set up the Caretaker Committee. But the Caretaker Committee appealed against the ruling and asked for a stay of execution of the judgment.

The appeal is pending in court but the national secretariat of the party has recognized the right of the Caretaker Committee to appeal and has given it the go ahead to continue with the congress. But the Plateau State government would have none of that.

INEC too has written to the Prof. Shown Exco to say that it does not recognize its existence since it was not elected.

The state Commissioner for Information said the state government is aware of a planned mass protest and demonstrations by hired ethnic and religious groups, associations and street gangs and an aggressive false propaganda and campaign of calumny against the governor and some government functionaries, to incite ethnic and religious hatred against the government.

He said it is unfortunate that political opponents of the government are hoping to reap political dividend by inciting and promoting religious, ethnic disharmony and crisis in the State.