Embattled Cross River PDP chairman rejects suspension, heads to court
PDP leaders in the state on Friday removed the chairman for various acts of misconduct.
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Embattled Cross River PDP chairman rejects suspension, heads to court
The Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Cross River, Mr. Venatius Ikem has described his alleged suspension by members of the State Working Committee (SWC) as faulty.
PDP leaders in the state on Friday removed the chairman for various acts of misconduct.
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Ikem’s removal was announced in a letter dated November 15, 2024, and signed by 14 members of the State Working Committee (SWC).
The PDP auditor in the state who is under suspension was exempted from signing the letter.
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Similarly, the party’s chairmen in the 18 local government areas of the state also endorsed the removal of the chairman at a press briefing held at the party’s Secretariat in Calabar the same day.
They said Ikem was suspended for alleged misappropriation of funds, high-handedness, and inability to manage the party in the state.
Ikem, who addressed journalists in Calabar on Saturday, said the purported removal was political.
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The chairman added that he would consider legal action against the act.
He described the allegations put forward by the SWC as baseless.
He said: “Like they always say, you give a dog a bad name when you want to hang it. The truth is that to the best of my knowledge, I run one of the most efficient EXCOS of our party.
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“We meet regularly and I think in the last quarter or so we have had two stakeholders meetings. We have our regular State Committee meetings and the stakeholders meetings.
“Secondly, I think there must be issues to discuss, whenever there are issues and programmes I am always there, we just had a party revalidation exercise this year, and we had the party congresses this year we performed well.
“In the last local government elections, we stood up very strong and I am very proud of our outing despite the outcome given the circumstances
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“To me, I know and everybody knows that I am doing my best to run the party within the context we find ourselves. So talking about not holding meetings or ineptitude leadership is completely out of the question.
“One of the problems I see in PDP is the hangover of being in government, we have been in government for so long that many people have never experienced being out of government.
“They believe that things should be the way they used to be when we held sway in the government house.
“The drastic change to being an opposition party is not being properly absorbed by our members so their expectations are usually not what are possible in terms of welfare, availability of funds for this and that. But even given that we have done very well.”
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Vena knows nothing about leadership.He has not provided one.He was elected Chairman of Council, a position he held for under 2 years during the Military era.That gave him political orgasm without maturity.You cannot be a leader without people.The crowd around you is your strength.Nobody’s opinion ever bothered to him. He remained “the know it all”s man and only creating a commanding height for himself.You can only come tumbling down from such height without a support to help you stand.How can you single handedly install Ward excos and boastfully tell your Party men to go to hell.Yes ” politics is local,the local should be your strength, That is when your constituents are your strength.You can’t be eating home rats and boasting outside.This is Vena’s predicament.