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| Governor Rotimi Amaechi |
As Northern professionals oppose 6-year single tenure
Vincent Obia in Lagos and Chuks Okocha in Abuja
Peoples Democratic Party governors who voted for the
re-election of Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi in the last Nigeria
Governors' Forum election may be considering floating a new party, to emerge as
a Third Force to the ruling PDP and opposition coalition party, All
Progressives Congress.
The group,
comprising seven governors, has already commenced talks with the three
governors of the All Nigeria Peoples Party with a view to aligning to form the
new party, THISDAY has learnt.
Amaechi and Sokoto State Governor Aliyu Wammako have been
suspended by PDP for reasons not unconnected with the NGF election and their
position on it.
Besides Amaechi and Wammako, others said to be involved in
the proposed new party are Governors Sule Lamido of Jigawa State, Murtala Nyako
of Adamawa State, Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano State, Babangida Aliyu of Niger State
and Usman Dakingari of Kebbi State.
The governors, who are perceived to be opposed to President
Goodluck Jonat-han’s assumed second term ambition, want a party where they
would form the nucleus of its organisational structure and be founders ahead of
the 2015 general election.
As part of their game plan, the governors are also
considering talks with the national leader of the Accord Party and former Oyo
State Governor, Senator Rashidi Ladoja, and another former governor of the
state, Otunba Adebayo Alao-Akala, in a bid to make an in-road into the
South-west.
Ladoja and his hitherto estranged deputy, Alao-Akala, have
reunited in a rare political rapprochement aimed at stopping Oyo State Governor
Abiola Ajimobi's re-election.
ANPP is one of the parties trying to merge with Congress for
Progressive Change, Action Congress of Nigeria, and a faction of All
Progressives Grand Alliance to form the All Progressives Congress.
The PDP governors’ move is said to be hinged on their
alleged distrust of some leaders of the emerging opposition coalition and the
fact that they may not be fully integrated into the new party's structure.
THISDAY gathered that the decision to open talks with the
three ANPP governors may not be unconnected with the complaint of the ANPP that
the opposition merger partners are showing more preference for CPC, which
governs only one state (Nasarawa), than ANPP that is in control of Borno, Yobe
and Zamfara states.
The sense of distrust being felt by the PDP governors
towards some leaders of APC, it is gathered, also follows the treatment meted
out to Nuhu Ribadu, who was the presidential candidate of ACN at the last
general election in 2011.
The former Lagos State governor and national leader of ACN,
Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, and ACN were alleged to have dumped Ribadu for Jonathan at
the last minute.
The PDP governors are also worried about the perceived
autocratic tendencies of the CPC leader, General Muhammadu Buhari, his military
background, and his hard stance on issues.
One of the apprehensive PDP governors told THISDAY, “The
option in this regard for the aggrieved PDP governors, senators and members of
the House of the Representatives is to move to another party or form a new one.
“If our fears are not addressed both in the PDP and the
merging APC, we are going to leave to a new party where we will present a
credible candidate that both PDP and APC lack.”
The governors aim to ensure that three strong political
parties, comprising PDP, APC, and the one they are considering, contest the
2015 general elections.
They are trying to build up political relationships across
the country, but especially the South-west, through Ladoja and Alao-Akala as
well as associates of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
According to the source, who spoke with THISDAY, the said
PDP governors, who are mainly from the three geopolitical zones of the North,
already have the approval of the former president.
Obasanjo too is believed to be rallying his political
associates to meet with the governors for the concretisation of plans for the
new party.
But for his trips to the United States and Canada, the
former president would have been holding the consultations for the planned new
party by now, but his associates are said to be doing this on his behalf.
A northern governor, who spoke on condition of anonymity,
narrated some of the permutations ahead of the 2015 election, thus, “You don’t
put all your eggs in one basket. Some of us have expressed our fears and we
expect that such fears are addressed.
But in the meantime, we are still exploring other options to ensure that
democracy is fully established within the rights of association and assembly.”
A source within ANPP said some of the party’s stakeholders
were aware of move to form a third force. He said, “This is all about politics.
We in the ANPP believe that we ought to be ranked higher than the CPC that has
only one state of Nasarawa. So what we are doing is to explore options and not
that we are working against the merger.
“We have made our views known and it is expected that such
complaints would be addressed in time.”
THISDAY understood that the protem officials of APC were aware
of the ANPP’s complaints, as this was believed to be one of the reasons why the
coalescing parties could not go to the Independent National Electoral
Commission last Friday.
Meanwhile, leader of the Northern Professionals, Dr.
Mohammed Junaid, has dismissed the six-year single tenure being proposed in the
ongoing constitution amendment for governors and the President as deceitful.
He said the proposal was the Presidency’s agenda that was
pushed by a former Chief Justice of Nigeria that he did not name.
“It is an agenda by the Presidency which used him (former
CJN) to smuggle in such condemnable clause. But it will fail because it is
intended to deceive the North and, unfortunately, some so-called northern
elders cannot read between the lines; they don’t know it is a decoy to make the
North wait longer than necessary.
“It is rather sad that some northern elders have made
themselves available to push through this bait that the Presidency has set to
deceive us, but we will fight tooth and nail to frustrate their plans because
they are not working in our interest but in their personal interests to water
their political ambitions,” Junaid alleged.
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