THE National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo, has advised members of the party, who may be planning to influence the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to return them as elected candidates in the next general election to forget such plans, as the national leadership would not condone it.

Speaking while receiving members of the harmonised executive committee of the Edo State chapter of the party, led by its chairman, Chief Dan Orbih, in Abuja on Thursday, he said such antics would not work in the PDP under his leadership.

He said though the PDP had been a “winning machine” it had been winning elections by isolating the people.

According to him, “the way we are winning, our people are working and being accused of winning with stolen mandate on an election we can freely win under a free and fair atmosphere.

That is why in the past, we worked to influence INEC and take all the bad names and Nigeria is worse for it.

“It is not just good for us to win election.  We have to work hard to win.  We had warned against internal wranglings, which breeds anti-party activities and that is why we struggled by all means to win election,” he stated.

The party chairman remarked that with the reforms being planned, it would be impossible for a single individual to control more delegates than necessary by virtue of his position in government or because of his constitutional responsibility, saying, “if this continues, we are no longer a Peoples Democratic Party but a one-man party.”

Dr. Nwodo, who observed that Edo and Lagos states posed the most serious challenges for the PDP, advised the leadership in Edo State to do away with internal wrangling for the sake of cohesion within the party in the state.

Speaking earlier, the chairman of Edo State PDP, Chief Orbih, regretted that some members of the party in the state had aligned with Governor Adams Oshiomhole to frustrate the party’s plans to re-capture the state’s governorship seat.

He said: “Some of us receive salaries from the AC government to make it more attractive to sabotage our efforts at re-strategising to recover the state. The other time, the governor visited the president and surprisingly, introduced someone as the state chairman of the PDP, at a time he went without his own party state chairman.

“In the local governments in the state, we have a situation whereby the state governors withheld six-month allocation and we see this not just as executive recklessness but political gangsterism,” Chief Orbih alleged calling on the national leadership to take action to check the alleged excesses of the state governor.

http://www.tribune.com.ng/index.php/front-page-news/8361-era-of-using-inec-to-rig-over-nwodo

That is what he is expected to say. It's not new to us, we have been hearing "No more business as usual", "New generation", etc. nothing spoil

no mind the i.d.iots them think say we be fools, we just prefer to be docile

Nwodo will have to prove his point from his home stead-Enugu. The state is still the only state where current election was held with FEDECO Boxes (December 2009 Local election) and Governor declared that all elected officials should stay put (status quo be maintained) Though Nwodo is not part of it, but we await the coming election as the Governor has declared all elective posts 2011 will be left for the occupant.Most important is that Nwodo's Federal constituency seat will be contested by the incumbent(uzo-uwani) and John Nwodo's former PA (Igbo etiti) maybe the election will be hosted with NECON boxes