.Presidency, PDP woo Nasarawa deputy gov
A plot to remove Nasarawa State Governor Umaru Al-Makura and supplant him with his deputy is being hatched by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Presidency’s foot soldiers, Daily Trust learnt in Abuja at the weekend.
Already the PDP is wooing Deputy Governor Dameshi Barau Luka to defect from the All Progressives Congress (APC) ahead of the impeachment, after which he would then take over as a PDP governor and work for the party’s victory in 2015 elections.
The relationship between Al-Makura and his deputy has been frosty since late last year.
Luka has been seen hobnobbing with PDP chiefs, including President Goodluck Jonathan, with whom he worshipped at a church near Keffi in January. After the church service, Luka criticised the APC for asking its federal lawmakers to block executive bills over “impunity” in Rivers State.
The state chapter of the APC later suspended the deputy governor from the party, citing the statements he made on the APC directive.
“He (Luka) will defect to the PDP on the eve of the impeachment and will become the governor eventually, on the platform of the PDP. That is the game-plan,” a source aware of the plot told Daily Trust in Abuja said.
Sources in PDP said President Jonathan and other PDP bigwigs are scheduled to attend a big rally in the next couple of weeks in Lafia to receive APC defectors, among them the deputy governor as well as Senator Solomon Ewuga.
Ewuga was any ally of the Nasarawa governor before the Ombatse uprising in May last year. He has already announced his defection to the PDP.
Another key PDP figure in Nasarawa is Information Minister Labaran Maku. It could not be confirmed if he is interested in the deal to impeach Al-Makura and make Luka the governor on PDP’s platform, because Maku himself has his own governorship ambition.
If Luka takes charge, he is likely to torpedo Maku’s bid for the PDP’s 2015 governorship ticket.
Daily Trust learnt that members of the Nasarawa State House of Assembly are involved with the impeachment plot, and already impeachable offences are being complied against the governor.
The PDP has 19 members in the assembly, while Al-Makura’s APC has five lawmakers.
The governor had been finding it difficult to work with the assembly since his assumption of office in May 2011. He has so far managed to stay afloat, but a politician aware of the impeachment plot said the governor may not be able to stand up to this “gang-up.”
When contacted last night, the Presidency said it was not plotting to instigate Al-Makura’s impeachment but said Luka had decided on his own to defect to the PDP.
“The Presidency has never wooed or invited the deputy governor of Nasarawa State to join the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). It is the deputy governor himself that has decided to defect to the PDP and Mr. President cannot say no to it,” President Jonathan’s Political Adviser Ahmed Ali Gulak said by telephone.
“On the question you asked about the Presidency and the PDP plotting to instigate Al-Makura’s impeachment, all I can tell you is that there is nothing like impeachment.”
But a spokesman for the PDP in Nasarawa State, Mr. John Mark Neto, said there is no official documentation showing Luka will join the PDP, although he confirmed that he heard rumours of Mr. Luka’s defection.
Daily Trust could not reach the deputy governor by telephone yesterday, but his spokesman Danjuma Joseph said he had no idea of any impeachment plot against Al-Makura.
“I don’t know anything about that,” he told Daily Trust by telephone.
PDP’s national publicity secretary Olisa Metuh could not be reached for comments yesterday.
For his part, a spokesman for Governor Al-Makura, Mr. Iliyasu Ali Yakubu, did not confirm nor deny the impeachment plot when contacted by our correspondent. He said the governor had survived the lawmakers’ onslaught previously and remained steadfast.
“It’s by some special and divine intervention by God himself and the genuine commitment and adherence to due process and the constitution that is saving the governor,” Yakubu said.
“The circumstances that brought the governor into office are the same circumstances that he has had to govern the state these three years. It has been three years of bashing, but the governor has remained steadfast to meeting the developmental needs of his people, God’s own people,” he added.
‘Financial mismanagement’
Daily Trust reports that the State Assembly set in motion processes of investigating the governor’s activities since late last year.
On November 3, lawmakers resolved to set up an ad hoc committee to look into reports presented by four standing committees which carried out on oversight of the government between May 29, 2011 and November of 2013.
The ad hoc committee was mandated to look into reports of the House committees on Public Accounts, Health, Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Commerce and Industry, and Capital Market, and report back to the House for further deliberation.
The House has so far received reports from four of the five committees.
The Public Accounts Committee report alleged extra-budgetary expenditure of about N3 billion by the Government House, Deputy Governor’s Office and the office of the Secretary to the State Government.
It also said of the N400 million Federal Government flood intervention fund of 2012, only about N100 million has been properly utilised, and N100 was found to have been improperly spent. The remaining N300 million is kept with the state emergency relief agency.
The three committees also accused the government of various financial misconduct including extra-budgetary spending and misappropriation.
A senior government official told Daily Trust that the issues raised by these committees were later that month compiled in a notice of impeachment, with two more alleged offences added on the list.
The additional offences are that the governor, who is the Visitor to the Nasarawa State University Keffi, was not executing that job regularly; and that Subsidy Re-investment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) funds allocated to the state were stolen.
The impeachment notice has been signed by 22 of the 24 state lawmakers, sources said.
Source: Daily Trust
