APC, A Marriage Of Inconvenience! #Obasanjo to PDP Govs. •Don’t Go To APC. •Northern Govs Meet In S/Arabia# There are growing indications that former president Obasnajo has directed the aggrieved governors of the PDP to forget any plot to dump the ruling party, just as the opposition APC is said to be in shock over failure of its initial efforts to get some PDP governors to defect from the ruling party. An impeccable source close to the Otta farmer revealed that the former president passed the message through one of the aggrieved governors during the recent birthday celebration of Chief Tony Anenih in Abuja, warning that the solution to their grievances is not in quitting the party. The former Nigerian leader, whose presence at the birthday reportedly excited the presidential family, was quoted as telling one of the governors at the event that APC was not an option, urging them to “explore all internal remedies, and if necessary, fight from within.” It was, however, gathered through the source that the directive to the aggrieved governors and others did not signify that he had endorsed President Jonathan; rather the source hinted that the retired general could be “strengthening a bloc within the ruling party.” Another source close to Obasanjo in the South-West, while confirming this mindset of the former president, added that he had also impressed it on his other allies across the country to remain in the PDP. Obasanjo was reported to have reminded all aggrieved party chiefs that the real reason behind the formation of the PDP was to safeguard the unity of the nation, insisting that PDP remained the only vehicle to sustain the unity of the country. The former leader was worried that the stories of defection were linked to him, especially after the visitation of the five governors. #Governors Meet in Saudi Arabia# Meanwhile, notable governors from the PDP currently on lesser hajj (umrah) in Saudi Arabia are said to have held several meetings in the holy land on whether or not to remain in the party.A source disclosed that the governors were unanimous in their opinion that President Jonathan had been unfair to them for supporting the national chairman of the party, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, and refusing to recognise the River State governor, Mr Rotimi Amaechi, as the chairman of the NGF. According to the source, who claimed to have witnessed some of these meetings, most of the said PDP governors are from the North-West and North-Central. But the source added that those of them (governors) who are currently in their second term called for caution, saying that, for the sake of those still eyeing a second term, it would be risky for them to openly work against the establishment by identifying with the APC. They were said to have arrived at a consensus that it would be suicidal, politically, for them to openly support APC, as this might make them make the same mistake former Vice President Atiku Abubakar made when he defected to the defunct ACN, on the platform of which he contested and lost the 2007 presidential election. The APC, they reasoned, was formed as a marriage of inconvenience and which would probably disintegrate when it is time to pick its major candidates, especially its presidential flag bearer. “Their impression is that it is better for them to be loyal to certainty than to go for uncertainty. Most of them believed that it would amount to wrong political calculation for them to believe that the new party would have a huge following in the South, citing the 2011 presidential election, where the presidential candidate of the ACN, Nuhu Ribadu, lost the presidential election woefully in the South-West,” the source said.
Posted on: Sat, 10 Aug 2013 05:04:44 +0000
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