From Yakubu Busari, Jos
Dogara
The Chairman of the Social Democratic Party, (SDP), Plateau State chapter, Hon. Abubakar Dogara has disclosed that the party would still maintain the 1993 rotational system that zoned the governorship seat to Plateau South for the interest of justice and fair play.
Dogara who is also Chairman of the Inter-Party Advisory Council, IPAC, in 19 Northern States, said the arrangement would complete the remaining six years of former governor Fidelis Tapgun.
He stated this during an interview with our medium in Jos and maintained that the party would retain Engr. Ponyah Ibrahim as its governorship candidate to complete the remaining tenure of Tapgun .
He disclosed that SDP is trying to bring back the lost glory and the confidence of the electorate if given the mandate to fulfill campaign promises.
According to him, Fidelis Tapgun has not finished his remaining four years in office after the first tenure, hence ” we brought Engr. Ponyah Ibrahim to complete it.”
Tapgun was elected governor of Plateau State between January 1992 and November 1993 on the platform of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, one of the two major party created alongside the National Republican Convention, NRC, by the military regime of Head of State, General Ibrahim Babangida. His tenure was terminated in a shake-up by the preceding military regime of General Sani Abacha in November, 1993.
Dogara thinks that zonal arrangement should be inherited by the new SDP, revived under new leadership in the current fourth republic.
He lamented the scarcity of money to fund campaigns ” political parties are facing a lot of challenges of funding and majority of them lack the funds to get polling unit’s agents ahead of the general elections which is less than one month.
“The INEC has placed them under hectic jobs of recruiting 4,989 agents across the 270 federal wards in rural and urban cities, but they face scarce resources to mobilize people because those shortlisted might be asking for money for logistics, they need to upload personal data in the polling units which runs into millions of Naira”.
Hon. Abubakar said that under the “very poor performance of the current administration to provide dividends of democracy to Nigerian,” Nigerians are now more divided now than before and urged the electorate to make better use of the upcoming general election to vote for leaders that would make more meaningful impact on their social and economic fortunes.
