Date: 2016-11-16

The members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Kwara State, loyal to senator Ahmed Makarfi's faction of the party, have rejected proposal made by police in the state, asking them to vacate the party's secretariat as part of an ongoing 'peace deal' with the other faction of the party in the state.

The factional members, drawn from across the 16 local government areas of the state, voiced their refusal when their chairman, Prince Sunday Fagbemi, put the question to them at a crowded press conference he conveyed to intimate them of the latest development in the party. The police, last week, invited leaders of the two camps to a meeting aimed at achieving peace between the two feuding factions of Senator Ali Modu Sheriff and Makarfi.

The meeting, it was gathered, would continue today at the police headquarters in Ilorin.

At yesterday's news conference, Fagbemi told his followers that the other faction of the party in the state, led by Akogun Iyiola Oyedepo, had dragged him to the police command, demanding that he should vacate the secretariat.

Fagbemi, who claimed that he had the support of about 85 percent of PDP members, said that he would abide by any decision they agreed on regarding the usage of the secretariat.

"This secretariat was secured through our collective efforts but Oyedepo said the police must ask us to vacate while the peace talk is going on," asking: "Is that what we want?