Executive Working Committee of Bayelsa PDP rejects dissolution

The lingering crisis rocking the South-South zone of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is getting messier by the day as the Bayelsa State Executive Working Committee, led by Solomon Agwanana, which the Dan Orbih-led zonal committee purportedly sacked, has rejected the move.
  
In a statement by the Publicity Secretary of the party in the state, Ebiye Agu Ogoli, the Dan Orbih-led zonal exco has no such powers to dissolve the state excos as the tenure of the zonal executives, led by Orbih, elapsed on March 13, 2025.
  
The South-South Zonal Working Committee of the party had, on Tuesday, April 22, 2025, dissolved the party’s working committee in Edo and Bayelsa states, approving the appointment of caretaker committees to oversee the party’s affairs in both states for three months.
  
The decision, which the zonal body said was effective from Tuesday, was made known at the end of a Zonal Working Committee meeting, presided over by Dan Orbih, the National Vice-Chairman of the party.
   
The statement signed by the Zonal Publicity Secretary, Prince Etim Isong, noted that the decision to set up caretaker committees for both states follows the dissolution of the State Working Committee of Bayelsa State and the Caretaker Committee in Edo State on account of what the PDP Zonal Working Committee described as various acts of gross misconduct, which, it said, were in clear breach of the party’s Constitution.
 
In his reaction, the state Publicity Secretary of the party, Ogoli, said that inasmuch as the matter was intentionally mischievous and ludicrous, the party’s state chapter would respond appropriately to the issues raised by those he regarded as misguided fellows.
  
He said: “The attention of the Bayelsa State Chapter of the PDP has been drawn to a frivolous story making the rounds that the State Working Committee of the PDP headed by Solomon Agwana has been dissolved, and that a state caretaker committee has been set up in its place by the illegal factional Zonal Executive Committee headed by Dan Orbih.
  
“To start with, the tenure of the former Zonal Executive Committee of the PDP elapsed on March 13, 2025, and to avoid a vacuum, a caretaker committee was appointed and constituted by the National Working Committee (NWC) on March 13, 2025, and headed by the highly respected Emmanuel Ogidi to oversee the affairs of the party pending the convocation of an Elective South-South Zonal Congress of the party.