PANDEF Youths Disagree With Edwin Clark Over Peter Obi, Endorse Atiku

Niger Delta youths under the aegis of the Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) Youth Wing have rejected the endorsement of the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Peter Obi, by the national leadership of PANDEF.

Naija News recalls that PANDEF leader, Edwin Clark, had endorsed Obi and slammed the Vice Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Ifeanyi Okowa.

But arising from an emergency meeting on Sunday at the headquarters of PANDEF, in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, the leadership of PANDEF Youth Wing announced their support for the PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar.

In a communiqué released after the meeting, the National Deputy Youth Leader, Vincent Oyibode, said Clark and other PANDEF leaders were on their own with Obi’s endorsement.

Oyibode said Clark and other leaders did so without due consultation with stakeholders, particularly the youth body of PANDEF, comprising national officers and state chapters’ chairmen.

He argued that a meeting where sensitive decisions were to be taken must involve all national executive officers and state chapter chairmen.

The communique reads, “There was no time PANDEF ever held a meeting to debate the need to participate or take a position as a group on the 2023 general elections and that those who purportedly endorsed Obi at that meeting spoke for themselves and not PANDEF and the South-south region of the Niger Delta.

“The major focus of PANDEF is to promote sons and daughters of the region on issues of public interest that bear a direct and indirect impact on the well-being of the Niger Delta people, as that is the constitutional aim and objective of the PANDEF constitution.

“That the same persons, without any meeting with stakeholders, have given an ultimatum to a son of the Niger Delta, Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa, the vice presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to drop his ambition for reasons best known to them and that this does not have the blessing of the youths of the region.”