Telescope.ng gathered that party sources on Tuesday, August 30, said the National Executive Committee (NEC) and Board of Trustees (BoT) are looking towards the southwest for a replacement.
According to the newspaper, sources privy to the conversation between Wike and the presidential candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar, at the London meeting, said Wike’s group insisted Ayu should step down and be replaced by the former national vice chairman (southwest), Dr. Eddy Olafeso, or a former governorship candidate of the PDP in Lagos state, Jimi Agbaje.
Some BoT members were reported to have said to be rooting for the former governor of Ondo state, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, to replace Ayu.
It was gathered that a group in the party in the southwest is opposed to Mimiko becoming the chairman, because of what they described as his inconsistent membership and ‘nomadic disposition,’ having defected from PDP to Zenith Labour Party (ZLP) where he worked against the party’s interest, only to return a couple of years later.
A source said: “Though both of them are from Ondo state, we will rather prefer Dr. Eddy Olafeso, a one-time commissioner in Ondo state, as the new national chairman, but the Wike group are objecting to it, saying Olafeso was a man Friday of the former national chairman, Prince Uche Secondus, and by extension Atiku Abubakar’s man too.”
Others, however, alluded to Olafeso’s contribution to the success of the party in the southwest in the 2019 elections, which produced Governor Seyi Makinde and several federal lawmakers in the zone, and the spirited fight in 2018 in Osun state, which laid the foundation for the emergence of governor-elect, Senator Ademola Adeleke, recently.
