Contrary to report in a section of the traditional media, the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM) has said that the party is still intact and has not been collapsed by anybody into another party.
The party’s National Publicity Secretary, Ahmed Rufai Abubakar, in a statement on Saturday described the report which suggested that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar owns the party and has now collapsed it into his new party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) as mischievous and false.
The PDM spokesperson’s statement reads in full, “Our attention has been drawn to the cover story of Weekly Trust of Saturday, February 15th, 2014 in which it was reported that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has directed all his supporters to register with APC.
“The story was, however, unprofessionally and mischievously captioned “Atiku collapses PDM into APC” in order to create the false impression that the former Vice President was at any point a member of PDM and that he is in a position to collapse the party into another one. This cannot be further from the truth.
“For the avoidance of doubt, Peoples Democratic Movement is a political party registered under the law which cannot collapse into another political party on the pages of newspapers or by the wish of editors who have thrown professionalism overboard.
“The process of collapsing one political party into another one is well known under the law. The editors of Weekly Trust are advised to familiarize themselves with the provisions of the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended) before going to press with the outlandish caption referred to above.
“PDM and its members nationwide are embarrassed by the story carried by Weekly Trust as it is totally false and appears to be a hatchet job. This is especially so considering that all the editors of Weekly Trust needed to do to verify their facts was to place a call to officers of PDM or officials of INEC before going to press.
“The Executive Chairman, the Managing Director and the Editor-in-Chief of Media Trust, owners of Weekly Trust and the National Chairman of PDM had cause to be under one roof for more than three hours on Thursday, February 13th, less than 48 hours before their paper went to press. There is absolutely no professional excuse for the paper to go to press with the story without hearing from PDM through our National Chairman.
“We call on the media, as the custodians of a sacred trust to only report that which is true without sensationalism and bias. Reporting falsehood does not serve any purpose other than to undermine the credibility of the profession of journalism as a whole.
“We hope the editors of Weekly Trust will find it honorable to retract the story under reference and to apologize to PDM and its members nationwide”.
