The Chairman of the 2016 Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) National Convention Planning Committee, Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike, has described the party’s sacked Acting National Chairman, Ali Modu Sheriff, as a destabilising factor when he was in charge.

In an interview on Saturday after the convention in Port Harcourt, Wike said: “All along, the crisis has been about the former acting chairman whose emergence was strongly opposed.

“This was destabilising the party and so we had to let him go. What is important is the party and not the individual. No sacrifice is too much for anyone to make as far as PDP is concerned.”

Wike noted that he had no personal interest in supporting Modu Sheriff as he was the best option at the time he was picked.

He said: “We will not allow the PDP to die or suffer divisions under our watch. History will never forgive us if we watch the party die.”

He described the Convention as “successful”, in spite of the failure to elect national officers because the party “has been repositioned in the interest of the nation”.