Ibekimi Oriamaja Reports
One Nigeria Movement (ONM), a sociopolitical organization, has stated that it was cruel and the height of arrogance for Senator Iyorchia Ayu, the national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to refer to those calling for his resignation as people who were young when the party was founded.
According to TrackNews Nigeria Ayu emphasized that he wouldn’t step down as the party’s chairman during an interview with BBC Hausa, saying that he was chosen to hold the position for a four-year term.
The organization reacted by saying it was ironic that the same Ayu, who left the PDP for the Action Congress (AC) in 2007 and worked against the PDP, can now refer to himself as the founding father of the party in a statement to Track News on Wednesday.
Ahmed Sodiq-Mugoro, the group’s convener general, and Babatunde Aliyu, its secretary, said that Ayu is like a father who abandons his children and leaves his home, only to return years later and claim control over the home that his children saved from collapse.
The group asked: “Will there be a PDP for him to lead with an air of arrogance as he is doing if others had quit the party in 2007 like Ayu did?
“When the PDP was founded in 1998, Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike will have been 32 years old. So a 32-year-old man is a child in Ayu’s eyes?
“How old was that Ayu in 1992 when he was President of the Senate? He wasn’t more than 40 years old. At 44, was he still a minister? He returned at 57 to serve as minister, didn’t he?
“So was he called a youngster when he was Senate President at 40? When he was 44 and a minister, was he still a child?
“We blame people like Governor Wike for bringing him out of his farm, where he was already living his life as a retired politician, and making him PDP chairman,” the statement reads. “Elders like Ayu, who look down on everyone around them like they are his children, are not fit to be at the helm of affairs of reasonable people.”
The group encouraged Atiku Abubakar, the PDP presidential candidate, to distance himself from Ayu’s disrespectful and derogatory statement.
In order to avoid being perceived as “someone who likewise sees even a 50 year old Nigerian as a kid, just like Ayu,” the ONM advised Atiku to distance himself from himself.
