•Revives PDM
From AMOS DUNIA, Abuja
Friday, July 24, 2009

•Photo: Sun News Publishing
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President Musa Yar’Adua may have made up his mind to run for a second term in office. Indications to that effect emerged Tuesday with a series of subtle re-allignments and repositioning within the beheved Yar’Adua inner circle.

The president had at the Special Convention of his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), on April 20, this year staved off speculations on his ambition to run for the 2011 presidential polls by warning early campaigners to lay off and give him and other elected public officials space to concentrate on the delivery of democracy dividends.

To give vent to the news push to return him to power in 2011, the rave making sixteen years old Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM), founded by his late elder brother Gen. Shehu Yar’Adua, has been revived and given more impetus in the presidency. It is led by Dr Farouk Abdulazeez, a known acolyte of the Yar’Adua political family.

The revitalization of the almost moribund body which slipped into near oblivion during the Chief Obasanjo /Atiku years has triggered off a major political shift in the nation with many political bigwigs falling over themselves to be part of it.
Among the jostlers are serving and ex-governors, senators, members of the House of Representatives and other influential politicians.

The new re-alignment came on the heels of the recent reported ceding of the presidency to the Soith-East geo-political zone by the leadership of the PDP, which expectedly drew the instant ire of the presidency.
Among those who have tacitly indicated interest in the on-going re-alignment is the former vice-president and leader of the PDM, Alhaji Atiku Abubakr, who is currently in the Action Congress (AC).
A source at the presidency said Atiku had over the past few weeks made discreet enquiries on the evolving scheme of things in the PDM and Yar’Adua’s planned return to power in 2011 on it’s platform.
The source said, “it is not for nothing that Atiku who had over the years refrained from calling his former political associates in the PDM, is now calling them up, and asking about their families and well being. We are confident that very soon he will be part of the movement again.”

Daily Sun further learnt that the former vice-president’s interest to return to the PDP, which began with a visit to his former boss, Obasanjo earlier in the year is still on course and will soon be realised.
To further oil and strengthen the return bid of the president in 2011, 32 pro-Yar-Adua groups have collapsed into the PDM, while arrangements are on to re-invigorate the state and local government chapters. The new head, Abdulazeez and other key officers are currently on a nationwide consultation tour to meet with state governors and other influential stakeholders.

Some of the groups that have so far embraced the PDM include Yar’Adua/Jonathan Solidarity Mass Movement, Yar’Adua/Jonathan Success Movement, Yar’Adua/Jonathan Solidarity Forum, home and abroad, south-south Progressive Council and Yar’Adua/Jonathan 2011 Project.
Others are Yar’Adua/Jonathan 7-point agenda, and continuity and good governance campaign.
The presidency is however striving hard to keep a distance from the activities of the group, but the source confirmed an unstinted backing.

Since the aborted third republic. The PDM had maintained an unbroken hold on the nation’s political space, successfully delivering the presidential seats to the late Chief M.K.O Abiola in the annulled June 12, 1993 polls and Chief Olusegun Obasanjo in 1998 before he set the machinery in motion that crippled it.

Before then, the late Shehu Yar’Adua had used it to galvanize an unprecedented Pan Nigeria drive that clinched twice the entire primaries of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP).
The group which has members currently across some major political parties also allegedly intervened in the controversial re-run governorship polls in Ekiti on April 25, 2009 by whipping ex-Lagos governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who is a member, and whose interest in the re-run polls was barely concealed, into lime.

Although, the group has fashioned an iron-clad plan to back Yar’Adua’s second term bid to the hilt it was learnt that Bauchi state governor and Yar’Adua’s son-in-law Isa Yuguda is being considered for the plum job “if for any reason the president will not run.”

http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/news/national/2009/july/24/national-24-07-2009-06.htm


Can someone please Advice this fool not to think of it.