The Peoples Democratic Party Elders Forum has called on the party’s national leadership to punish former President Goodluck Jonathan for allegedly betraying the PDP during the just-concluded governorship election in Bayelsa State.

The PDP, which had ruled Bayelsa State since return to democracy in 1999, was trounced and displaced by the All Progressives Congress in the November 16, 2019 governorship poll.

The PDP Elders Forum accused Jonathan of teaming up with the APC against the PDP, on whose platform he became the Bayelsa State Deputy Governor, Nigeria’s Vice-President and President during his political career.

In a statement on Sunday by its Chairman, Chief Benson Odoko, the PDP Elders Forum accused Jonathan of using the Bayelsa poll to negotiate with President Muhammadu Buhari not to prosecute him for alleged corruption.

In the statement, Odoko alleged, “The former President, who visited President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa in Abuja for an undisclosed mission just before the election, kept his distance from the PDP and its members throughout the period of the campaigns leading to the election.

“The forum was shocked when Jonathan and his wife donated the Aridolf Hotel to the APC as the operational contact point for visiting dignitaries of the party and as the venue for the party’s controversial primaries.

“These actions of Jonathan clearly portray him as a betrayer of the PDP which gave him the platform to occupy the highest positions in the country, Bayelsa State, and millions of the PDP members just to protect his selfish interest.”

It added, “The argument that Jonathan worked against the PDP because his preferred candidate, Chief Timi Alaibe, lost in the primaries was a pathetic perfidy meant to cover up the real reasons for this betrayal against Bayelsans and Nigerians.”

He called on the national leadership of the PDP to invoke disciplinary action against Jonathan.

Meanwhile, the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Kola Ologbondiyan, on Sunday declined to comment on the allegation by a former Governor of Jigawa State, Sule Lamido, accusing Jonathan of trading the Bayelsa governorship poll for the Malabu oil scam.

“I decline comment,” Ologbondiyan told one of our correspondents on Sunday when contacted.

The PDP National Chairman, Uche Secondus, had in an interview with journalists said it was untrue that Jonathan betrayed the PDP.

Efforts by our correspondent to get the responses of Jonathan, through his spokesman, Mr Ikechukwu Eze, and the Chairman, PDP Board of Trustees, Senator Walid Jibrin, proved abortive.

Eze neither picked his calls nor responded to a text message from our correspondent as of the time of filing this report.

Jibrin’s telephone line indicated that it was switched off.