Jang, Dariye move to heal old wounds in Plateau.

Jonah Jang, Joshua Dariye

Former governors of Plateau State, Jonah Jang and Joshua Dariye have attended their first meeting together at the state secretariat of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Jos, signalling the healing of old wounds sustained during the 2015 elections.
“This is the first ever meeting of the PDP where the three senators, including the former two governors will attend together. And that marks the end of whatever rift anybody would have suspected existed between senators Jang and Dariye,” the state party chairman, Raymond Dabo, told Daily Trust yesterday in Jos.

“It was the meeting of the State Executive Council (SEC), the highest decision making organ of the party in the state; and for the first time in Plateau, the two former governors attended.
“Their presence alongside Senator Jerry Useni strengthened the relationship among the ranks of the party. We are set to move on from the issues that divided the party in order to recapture Government House in the next election,” he said.

The two ex-governors have been on the warpath for over a decade; preceding the exit of Dariye from Government House after his ouster in 2006. The bad political blood between them worsened in 2015 when Dariye joined forces within the PDP to stop Jang’s anointed governorship candidate, late Gyang Pwajok, from succeeding him in the Government House, to the benefit of the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC), whose candidate, Simon Lalong, won the seat.

But the state PDP chairman said those events had become history with Tuesday’s meeting which approved the zoning of seats, timetable and guidelines for the upcoming congress.
“The coming congress is the first major activity of the PDP from the SEC meeting, where the old wounds were healed. We hope to remain united, and recapture Government House, and the few seats we lost during the last election,” Dabo said.