A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and broadcast mogul, Chief Raymond Dokpesi said, yesterday, that his trial in court over alleged corruption has no effect on his chairmanship ambition.
He said his desire to become PDP national chairman remained strong and unshaken.
There were insinuations that Makarfi and many PDP chieftains would move en masse to APDA in the event the Supreme Court ruling favoured Senator Ali Modu Sheriff.
But Makarfi had at the height of the litigations and after the judgement said he and those with him had no business with APDA.
He once told Daily Trust, “If we planted APDA and then Sheriff’s people in some areas were moving to APDA; and it was Sheriff who was alleging that we did so, but it is now some of his people that have started moving there, so who did what?”
APDA’s National Chairman, Mohammed Shittu Kabiru, had variously denied the claim that he was fronting for PDP.
In a statement in September signed by the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Tosin Adeyanju, APDA urged Dokpesi to make available in the public domain, the cost he incurred in founding the party.
“APDA also challenges him to name the PDP governors and the Federal Government agency which he claimed are sponsoring APDA. These two clarifications would easily exonerate him or clearly show that his claims are not true for what it is worth,” the statement read.
Dokpesi said he had what it took to transform PDP if he eventually became its national chairman.
“The national convention zoned the position of the national chairman to the South and zoned the presidency to the North. And there is no micro zoning; the convention would have said it is zoning to the South West, but the convention in its wisdom did not do so.
“I take full responsibility for the roles I played in the formation and funding of APDA. It was set up as a plan B for the PDP at the peak of its internal crisis.
“I said very clearly that I have a lot of respect for the elders of this party, I have a lot of respect for constituted authority, but they are human beings,” he said.