2015: How President Jonathan plots to ‘capture Lagos’ for PDP in fresh game of intrigues • Picks Jimi Agbaje, to vie with Igbo Deputy Gov. . Replace Jimi Agbaje after one year in office with the Igbo deputy governor. President Goodluck Jonathan is leading an intensified campaign by his party, the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP) to win the February 2015 gubernatorial election in Lagos State, authoritative sources told IrohinO’odua on Wednesday. According to the reliable source, the President has met with major PDP stakeholders who have resolved to pick the Pharmacist, Mr Jimi Agbaje as the PDP candidate with a provision that an Igbo candidate would be picked to be his deputy governor. “The President wants PDP to take over Lagos and Kano. These are the two most important states to him apart from his home state of Bayelsa”, the source who attended the meeting held at the Aso Rock on Monday evening told IrohinO’Odua. But there is a covert, grand plot that may be unknown to Agbaje himself, another source within the PDP told our reporter: the Igbo deputy governor will replace Agbaje after one year when Agbaje would have been impeached. To this end, a small group from the Igbo business community has been raising funds to ensure it has enough people of Igbo extraction under the platform of the PDP in the Lagos State House of Assembly. “There is a mission of vengeance against the Yoruba political and economic elite. The PDP is the tool for this plot. Lagos is the economic heart of the Yoruba nation. All the other Yoruba states are tied to Lagos in all fronts. The calculation is that if Lagos falls into the hands of Igbo, then the Yoruba power bloc will be totally broken into pieces,” The source told IrohinOodua. Our correspondent learnt that the PDP’s decision to pick Agbaje who had flirted with the defunct Action Congress, (AC), the Democratic Peoples’ Alliance, (DPA) and the Labour Party, (LP) since 2007 when he launched his bid for Alausa, was informed by his Christian background. The PDP is also counting on the Lagos Igbo population. Agbaje is a strong Catholic and his choice seems to meet the assumed prevailing mood of many voters in Lagos who think it is the turn of Christians to produce the next Lagos State governor. Two successive Muslims have been civilian governors since 1993 when Chief Otedola, the last Christian to have occupied the seat, left office. Agbaje hails from Isale-Eko, which has largely produced the governors of Nigeria’s most populous state and the country’s commercial hub. One source told IrohinO’odua that the Igbo community across party lines have been meeting weekly in Lagos with the hope of taking over the traditional Yoruba community which nevertheless has been a subject of grab by Igbo elite in an agelong contest dating back to half a century. In the 1950s, the National Council of Nigerian Citizens, (NCNC) led by an Igbo icon, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe led a vicious campaign for political control of the city, an effort torn into shreds by the Afenifere, a Yoruba socio- political group led by the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo. During the civil war between 1966 and 1970, the leader of the Igbo Biafra, Odumegwu Ojukwu had supported a small army of Yoruba stock prompting the group to take over the Yoruba South west. Secret memos sent by Ojukwu to the leader of the group, the late Col Victor Banjo however revealed that Ojukwu had sought the Igbo sharing the status of Lagos with the Yoruba rebels which he sponsored. IROHINOodua
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 08:37:36 +0000
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