The national leadership
of the Peoples
Democratic Party has
refused to hang the
official portrait of
President Muhammadu
Buhari at the party’s
national secretariat, checks by The PUNCH have revealed.
Over 100 days after the President assumed office, the PDP
has yet to hang his portrait at any of the offices in its Wadata
House national secretariat, located at Zone 5, Abuja.
The party has also said it would never put Buhari’s portraits
on its walls though it has removed that of the former
President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, who ruled on the
platform of the PDP.
“We will never hang his portrait in this office, because
President Buhari is not known to our party. He is not a
leader of our party and therefore we will never put his
portrait here. We are a political party, very partisan and
therefore, we are not going to hide that,” National Publicity
Secretary of the PDP, Olisa Metuh, told our correspondent
on the telephone on Tuesday.
Jonathan was also the presidential candidate of the former
ruling party during the last general election but he was
defeated by Buhari, who was the presidential candidate of
the opposition All Progressives Congress.
The defeat was the first to be suffered by the PDP since the
return of democracy in 1999.
Before now, the party has always been hanging the portraits
of all the Presidents at the party’s reception area as well as
the National Executive Committee and National Working
Committee halls within the secretariat.
Metuh said the APC also did not hang the portrait of Jonthan
in its offices before the former President was defeated in the
March 28 election.
“Can you find out if the APC had the portrait of former
President Jonathan in their office before he was defeated?
That is just it,” he told our correspondent.
When asked whether the party was taking its own pound of
flesh, Metuh said no but that since Buhari “is not a member
of our party, we won’t put his portrait here.”
The APC National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Lai Mohammed,
expressed shock at Metuh’s comment.
“This is ridiculous and we have no comment. Let Nigerians
judge the PDP on this matter,” Mohammed said.
He said the PDP spokesman had a shallow understanding of
the concept of opposition politics.
Meanwhile, work has stopped at the new secretariat of the
PDP, located in the Central Business District, Abuja.
Investigations by our correspondent indicated that
contractors handling the project were only doing skeletal
jobs at the site.
When our correspondent visited the site on Tuesday, there
was no visible job being done at the site.
It was gathered that the cost of the project was put at
N11.5bn when it was awarded some years ago. At
completion, the building is expected to have 12 floors, with
two other floors serving as the car park.
The party had claimed that the project was being financed
from levies and contributions from members.
When a fund-raising dinner was organised a few years ago,
the party was able to realise about N5bn, and the project,
which started more than four years ago, was to be delivered
in 126 weeks.
The former National Chairman of the party, under whose
leadership the project commenced, Prince Vincent
Ogbulafor, had then said that the complex, when completed,
would strengthen the capacity of the PDP to discharge its
role effectively in Africa.
The party had claimed on January 5, 2015 that it was going
to spend part of the N21.8bn it realised from the party’s
fund-raising on the party’s secretariat.
A former Minister for Information and the Chairman of the
party’s Fund-raising Committee, Prof. Jerry Gana, had said
the money donated to the PDP was not meant for the
campaign of the defeated Jonathan alone. www.punchng.com/news/well-never-hang-buharis-portrait-in-our-offices-pdp/

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