2011: North plots to retain presidency
Written by Emmanuel Aziken
Monday, 16 February 2009


ABUJA—NORTHERN Senators are canvassing the position that the North’s quest to sustain power beyond 2011 is beyond the health or other personal considerations of President Umaru Yar’Adua.
Senators from the region who conveyed the message to President Yar’Adua through the Northern Union penultimate week told Vanguard at the weekend that they are now determined to put the administration’s failing policies on track.

The advisory body to be inaugurated today, Vanguard gathered, is to help articulate the views of the North for the President’s attention and possible reversal.

“Apart from his slogan on the seven point agenda, we seem to be getting nothing from the government and we feel that it is time for us to intervene, because his success or otherwise rubs on the North,” a Senator present at the meeting which held in the Senate new building told Vanguard last night.

“The north has something at stake and it goes beyond him, because the North must have its full two terms in the leadership of the country,” another Northern senator present at the meeting said, “and this goes beyond him whether he is interested or not (in second term).

The North is determined to ensure that the power stays in the region beyond 2011; afterall the South took its full two terms,’’ the Senator who spoke on the basis of confidentiality because he was not authorized to speak on the issue said.

In that regard, Vanguard learnt that Northern senators in conjunction with the Northern Union are determined to ensure that the image of the administration is polished to enable the North satisfactorily sell the prospect of a second term.

The Northern senators, Vanguard gathered are especially bothered by the administration’s failures in the power sector and in the economy.

The committee to be inaugurated today, it was further learnt, would also review the policies of the Central Bank which one Senator said last night said were not working.

Also of concern to the northern legislators, Vanguard learnt, was the President’s seeming lack of touch with the Northern lawmakers.

“He has to know it that all of us have a base and he cannot afford to ignore us,’’ one source present at the meeting said.

The source was confident that the President would be receptive to the initiative spearheaded by the Senator Olusola Saraki-led Northern Union.

“Don’t forget that it was the Northern Union that spearheaded power shift and told Obasanjo to the face that power must go to the North, so I believe the President is conscious of the fact and would heed the views of the Union.”

Among the members of the advisory committee to be inaugurated today are Senators Jibril Aminu, Abubakar Sodangi, Joseph Akaagerger, Bala Mohammed and Umaru Dahiru, the chairman of the Northern Senators Forum.