PDP Crisis: Jonathan Moves TO Mend Cracked Walls …Shifts BoT, NEC Meetings

Director, Japan International Cooperation Agency, Mr Yamazaki Masanori, lecturing participants at the seminar on draft final report to review and update Nigeria National Water Resources Master Plan in Abuja recently.

The alleged resolve by majority of the governors of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to remove the party’s embattled National Chairman, Bamanga Tukur, has reportedly forced the Presidency to suspend the meeting of the Board of Trustees (BoT) and National Executive Committee (NEC) by a week.

The PDP national caucus meeting would have held today, with the BoT meeting earlier scheduled for tomorrow, which would have preceded the NEC meeting fixed for Wednesday.

But following available information to the effect that the meeting may not turn out well in the Presidency’s favour, with the planned removal of Tukur, President Goodluck Jonathan was said to have ordered a shift in the dates to January 15 for the BoT meeting, while the NEC meeting holds on January 16, just as the national caucus meeting has been slated for January 14.

It was also gathered that the shift was designed to enable the party leadership to have more time to persuade warring Governor Babangida Aliyu of Niger State and his Jigawa State counterpart, Alhaji Sule Lamido, to return fully to the PDP before the NEC meeting.

It was learnt that the Presidency got strong evidence that the anti-Tukur forces, led by a South-South governor and a minister, who is also from the South-South, compelled the party hierarchy to postpone the meetings.

A party leader hinted Saturday night, that the governor, who has the ears of many other PDP governors, was frontally opposed to the continued retention of Tukur, and had successfully mobilised for the removal of the party chairman during the NEC meeting.

The governor was said to have met and agreed with the South-South minister, who is also close to Jonathan, to impress upon other governors to do all that was necessary to remove Tukur at the meeting.

However, Jonathan, who is opposed to disgracing the party boss out of office, reportedly asked for the postponement of the meetings to allow for further discussions on the most peaceful and dignified way forward.

Our source indicated that the argument of the governor and the minister is that apart from being loyal to Jonathan, Tukur has allowed the party to be factionalised to a point that five governors had to dump the party for the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC).

But the pro-Jonathan camp within the party allegedly argued for the retention of Tukur because of his purported exceptional loyalty to the president.

The meeting was also said to have been postponed at the instance of the president to give the party leadership more time to persuade Governors Aliyu and Lamido to forget the past and fully return to the party ahead of the 2015 elections.

Jonathan was alleged to have expressed worry that the true position of the two governors on the party remained unknown even though they did not defect along with their five colleagues in the G7 last December to the opposition APC.

However, Secretary of the PDP BoT, Senator Walid Jibrin, told newsmen in an interview that the meetings were postponed because of logistics reasons as well as to enable members return from their Christmas and New Year break.

According to him, “we actually want to have a full house during the meetings so that all party issues could be effectively discussed.”

It would be recalled that prior to the defection of Governors Abdulfatah Ahmed of Kwara; Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko of Sokoto; Musa Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano; Murtala Nyako of Adamawa and Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers to APC, there was pressure on Tukur to convene the NEC meeting where the problems of the PDP would be addressed against the backdrop that the last NEC was held before the August 31, 2013 Special National Convention.

The NEC meeting ought to have taken place in the third week of last December, but was shelved for inexplicable reasons.