Something unexpected happened in Jalingo, the capital of Taraba State. The leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Donga Local Government Council got into a big fight. It happened during a meeting at the State Government House.
The reason for the fight was that they couldn’t agree on who should be the PDP candidate for the upcoming local government elections. In the past, the party would hold a primary to choose the candidate. But this time, the councils were told to come up with a candidate together.
Unfortunately, the leaders from Donga couldn’t agree on a candidate. This disagreement led to the fight. The former Majority Leader of the State House of Assembly, Captain (Rtd) Douglas Neatse, even got physical with some people who didn’t support his choice of candidate. It seems he really wanted to force his candidate on the people of the council.
After the fight, one of the stakeholders explained to the reporters what happened. They said that all the important PDP leaders in the local government had agreed to follow a tradition that had been in place since 1999. This tradition is called the PDP zoning arrangement, and it helps decide who should be the candidate. But it seems some people didn’t want to follow this tradition, and that’s what caused the trouble.
