As the crisis rocking Ogun state chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) become messier, the faction loyal to Governor Gbenga Daniel may have come to the conclusion that the other faction, led by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, was out to kill the party.

It has, therefore, decided to settle for the “Rotimi Amaechi option” as a way out of the crisis. The Supreme Court had pronounced incumbent Governor Rotimi Amaechi as the elected governor of the PDP, maintaining that he, and not Celestine Omehia, won the primaries of the PDP in 2007 and should have been fielded as the candidate of the party at the election.
It was learnt that the Daniel group plans to replicate such a development in Ogun.

The state Commissioner for Information, Sina Kawonise, who decried the crisis in the party, said: “We won’t give up. They thought they could frustrate us out of the party, but we won’t leave a house we helped built. We are not leaving PDP; but we will pursue the legal option and we are sure we will be vindicated at the end of the day. They want to kill PDP, but we won’t allow it.”
A top source in the Daniel faction criticised steps taken by the Obasanjo faction, adding that the former president was using his position to deny them of justice.

He corroborated the statement by Kawonise that the Daniel faction would not be forced out of the PDP.
He said: “We have resolved to stay in the party and explore legal options to reverse the injustice that (Olusegun) Obasanjo has done to us because they are trying to ripe where they didn’t sow.
“They are standing on illegality. Both the INEC and the party hierarchy were at the congress that produced our candidates. The same cannot be said of their own. This is a party and there are rules to be followed. We followed all the rules, but they didn’t and I don’t see any justice in what is going on at the moment. They just used their connection to hijack that thing at the court.

“If they think they can frustrate us out of PDP, they must be joking. We will pursue the matter till the time of election and beyond the election. We will get it from them. “Rotimi Amaechi didn’t go through the hassles of election and he is today ruling in Rivers. We won’t relent. We will pursue it to a logical conclusion, even to the Supreme Court.” Asked if the group is exploring going the way of Amaechi-Omehia face-off, the source said: “We won’t rule out anything because fair is fair, they are trying to cheat us.”

But the spokesman of the Obasanjo faction, Babatunde Fadun, dismissed the claim of the Daniel faction, adding: “they are just bluffing. They know they can’t do anything.’’ ‘ They can argue that INEC and the PDP witnessed their congresses but do you build something on nothing? The PDP has written that the Fadairo Exco be harmonised to bring on board everybody. A court of competent jurisdiction has said the exco is illegal. Another court said PDP shouldn’t relate with Fadairo. So you can see that they are not on firm ground as they claimed.”

The state chapter of the PDP has been locked in a fierce supremacy battle that has polarised the party along two factions. One allegedly sympathetic to Daniel is led by Joju Fadairo while Dayo Soremi leads another group that has the sympathy of Obasanjo. The two factions also held parallel conventions that produced Gboyega Isiaka and Idowu Olurin from the Daniel and Obasanjo factions.

Although the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) initially recognised the candidates produced by the Fadairo faction since it witnessed the process that produced them, a Federal High Court in Abuja ordered that the list be discarded in favour of the Soremi side. Stunned by its inability to reverse the court order, the Daniel faction initially threatened to quit the PDP but later backed off following emissaries from President Goodluck Jonathan.