The alleged resolve by majority
of the governors of the
People’s Democratic Party
(PDP) to remove the embattled
National Chairman of the party,
Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, forced the Presidency to suspend the
meeting of the Board of
Trustees (BoT) and National
Executive Committee, NEC,
Sunday Vanguard has learnt. It also emerged that President
Goodluck Jonathan wanted 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. The NEC meeting, earlier fixed
for Wednesday, January 8, will
now hold on January 16, with
the BoT meeting scheduled for
January 15 and the National
Caucus meeting slated for January 14. It was gathered 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 told Sunday
Vanguard, last 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 two meetings to allow for
peace to reign. 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 left. But the pro-Jonathan camp
within the party allegedly
argued for the retention of
Tukur because of his
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 All
Progressive Congress, APC. But the Secretary of the PDP
BoT, Senator Walid Jibrin,
explained that the meetings
were postponed for logistics
reason and to enable members
return from their Christmas and New Year break. “We actually want to have a full
house during the meetings so
that all party issues could be
effectively discussed,” Jibrin
said. It will 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 December last year, but was
shelved for inexplicable
reasons.
www.vanguardngr.com

that tukur of a man is the problem in pdp nw, ebele shld be careful sha, its obvios the guy hs brot division in the party and pdp instability may be of advantage to apc

Tukur is just doing his northern assignment to distabilise the party before the next election thats why i said GEJ is affraid of northerners wallahi who is tukur? He completely ruin the party and you are hesitating to dismiss him nawaooo

I was here