TheCable

Ali Modu Sheriff, former governor of Borno state, has promised to help the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) win the state in the 2015 elections.

Sheriff, who recently defected from the All Progressives Congress (APC), made the promise at his official welcome to the PDP on Tuesday at the party’s national secretariat in Abuja.

“My coming to PDP is to pay back the people of Borno and help to change the mistakes made in the past,” he said.

He had always been in the opposition until now, but has fallen out with Kashim Shettima, his former commissioner and the current governor of his state whom he helped to office in 2011.

Sheriff has been holding closed-door meetings with President Goodluck Jonathan in recent times.

Adamu Mu’azu, the PDP national chairman, said there would be no automatic waiver for both new and returnee members of the party.

Mu’azu, however, explained that all new members of the party would be required to personally write to the party leadership to seek waiver to participate in the party’s primaries slated for November.

“We don’t give automatic waiver like other parties. But one thing I can assure you is that anybody that will contest for any position should proceed to buy forms and apply.

“So that is the message. We don’t do blanket case. Every application is on individual basis, just write a letter and we will process it,” he said.

The chairman added that all of such applications would be treated and given consideration.

Mu’azu, who described the defection of the opposition members to the PDP as dawn of a new era, assured them that there was no discrimination in the PDP.

He, however, charged party members in the states to work in harmony, to ensure its unity and victory in 2015 general elections.

Ken Nnamani, chairman of the zonal re-integration committee for the north-east, expressed optimism that the PDP in Borno would henceforth know peace, stressing that the party had a singular objective to win the state.