We are N’Assembly’s driving force - PDP

Despite being in the opposition, the national leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party has said the party remains the driving force of the National Assembly.

It pointed out that this accounted for the emergence of Senator Ike Ekweremadu as the Deputy Senate President, a feat it described as unprecedented in the political history of Nigeria.

Acting National Chairman of the party, Mr. Uche Secondus, made this assertion while addressing members of the PDP National Executive Committee on Thursday in Abuja.

The meeting was the first to be held since September last year, when former President Goodluck Jonathan was adopted as the sole presidential candidate of the former ruling party.

Until Thursday, members of the party's National Working Committee had failed to convene the NEC because of calls for their sacking.

The calls became rampart following the loss of the presidential election to the All Progressives Congress in March this year.

But Secondus said the party had recovered from the loss and that the outcome of its retreat at Port Harcourt early in the year encouraged the PDP to recover quickly.

This, he said, helped the party to know the reality that it had for the first time in 16 years, become an opposition party.

Secondus said, "In our drive to revive the party after the elections, the national secretariat in conjunction with the PDP Caucus at the National Assembly organised a retreat in Port Harcourt for our legislators.

"It was a forum which was used to train and mobilise our legislators to excel in our new role as the leading opposition Party. Happily, that initiative became a huge success.

"Today, the PDP, as an opposition party, has become the driving force in the National Assembly and our own Senator Ike Ekweremadu is the Deputy Senate President, a feat that’s unprecedented in the political history of Nigeria.”

Chairman of the PDP Governors Forum, who is also the Governor of Ondo State, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, said the party lost the last election due to complacency.

He said some members of the party would have gone to court to challenge the outcome of the presidential election if the former President had not agreed to its outcome.

Mimiko said though the election had come and gone, it didn't mean there were no flaws.