IBB, Ciroma Move to Boost
APC, New PDP Alliance
Ahead of the scheduled meeting today between President Goodluck Jonathan and the seven Peoples Democratic Party governors who had walked out of the party’s convention on August 31, some political elders in the North have set up a committee in an effort to achieve a seamless defection of the governors to the opposition All Progressives Congress, THISDAY has learnt.
The suspension of Chief Olagunsoye Oyinlola from PDP is expected to be among the most important issues to be dealt with at the meeting.
The committee of the northern elders is said to comprise eminent personalities, including former military president Ibrahim Babangida, former minister of finance, Alhaji Adamu Ciroma, and Nigeria’s former permanent representative at the United Nations, Alhaji Maitama Sule. The panel is to address the hitches in the long expected movement of the governors, also called G7 governors, to the opposition coalition. The complications have bordered basically on disagreements over the control of party structures in the respective states governed by the seven governors.
But the meeting seems unlikely tonight because the president is scheduled to leave London today at 1400 hours GMT and arrive at the Presidential Wing of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport about 2000 hours. This means the meeting may either hold very late or would be rescheduled.
If the discussion, which has been described as a make-or-break gathering, holds today, Jonathan would be meeting the governors of Kwara State (Ahmed Abdulfatah), Jigawa State (Sule Lamido), Sokoto State (Aliyu Wamakko), Niger State (Babangida Aliyu), Kano State (Rabiu Kwankwanso), Rivers State (Chibuike Amaechi), and Adamawa State (Murtala Nyako) to try to reach a peace agreement in the current crisis rocking the ruling party.
THISDAY was reliably informed that the G7 governors would be insisting on the reinstatement of Oyinlola as the party’s national secretary. Oyinlola was one of the state delegates, led by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who, along with the G7 governors, had staged a walkout in protest at the PDP national convention to form the New PDP.
The president and the governors would also be expected to confront each other with allegations of breach of the peace arrangements arrived at during their last meeting in Aso Rock, especially, as it relates to vituperations in the media. The G7 governors would be claiming witch-hunt and other forms of political victimisation and intimidation against them and other supporters of the New PDP, including suspension, revocation of property and arrests of members of the group.
But the president may confront the governors with some intelligence reports showing their alleged clandestine plans to sustain an anti-federal government campaign among the northern populace. One of such secret information available to the Presidency, according to sources within the intelligence community, showed that on November 10, one Alhaji Shehu Ashaka, a prominent businessman based in Kano, was invited to the Sokoto State Government Lodge in Abuja where he met the state governor, who allegedly requested his assistance in the setting up of a strategic team comprising three prominent northerners , namely, Saleh Hassan, Nasiru Mamman (a former Chief Justice), and Bello Kirfi (Waziri Bauchi).
THISDAY intelligence sources said the team was expected to go round the northern states to try to convince the public there that the Jonathan administration did not mean well for the region and there was, thus, an urgent need to rally the grassroots and elite support for the G7 governors to discredit the president.
The sources alleged that the businessman declined the job, stating that he is too old for the delicate task. But it was gathered that Hassan, who met Ashaka in the lodge before he left, allegedly accepted the offer. The sources claimed that $100,000 was earmarked for the campaign.
The G7 governors, however, may not be persuaded to back down on their demands, especially, the reinstatement of Oyinlola, who was until the court verdict nullifying his removal as PDP secretary, the national secretary of New PDP.
Source: Thisday
