As President Goodluck Jonathan and elders of the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) prepare to meet governors, who held a parallel
convention at the weekend, it has been gathered that a party leader
during the regime of the late General Sani Abacha, may take over the
leadership of the ruling party in an acting capacity.
Following
the crisis, which engulfed the PDP since Saturday, when seven governors
and former vice president Atiku Abubakar led other aggrieved members to
hold a meeting, where they appointed a chairman for their faction, PDP
elders had set up a meeting, as one of the last- ditch effort to resolve
the impasse.
The governors, made up of Chibuike Amaechi
(Rivers), Babangida Aliyu (Niger), Abdulfatah Ahmed (Kwara), Murtala
Nyako (Adamawa), Rabiu Kwankwaso (Kano), Sule Lamido (Jigawa) and Aliyu
Wamakko (Sokoto), had rejected goings-on in the PDP, especially the way
the party’s special national
convention was conducted and therefore,
announced a PDP faction.
Following the governors’ request that
the National Chairman of the PDP, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, should
relinquish his position, among other demands, Alhaji Gambo Lawan,
chairman of the Grassroots Democratic Party (GDP) during the Abacha
administration, has been tipped to become the acting chairman of the
party.
Sources revealed that the aggrieved governors, who enjoy
the secret support of three former heads of state, would nominate Lawan
in the meeting with party elders and if this gets the blessing of all,
the former party chairman would oversee the affairs of the PDP, pending
when another national convention would be organised for the selection of
a substantive national chairman.
Gambo, from Borno State, who
bidded for the PDP chair during the exercise that brought Tukur to
office, is not privy to the plan for him to emerge as acting national
chairman of the party, but those pushing for his nomination said he’s
capable of restoring confidence in the party.
Sources however,
revealed that for Gambo to be appointed acting national chairman, Tukur
would be asked to resign his position, just as Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo did
in 2011 when he was embroiled in court case in his home state, Enugu.
It
was gathered that Tukur’s resignation would be hinged on the court case
instituted by the Abdullahi Kawu Baraje faction of the PDP, which
demanded that he should be compelled to stop parading himself as
national chairman of the party.
If the court grants the prayer of
the Baraje faction, as it resumes sitting on September 9 and grants an
injunction restraining Tukur from parading himself as chairman, he would
be compelled by PDP elders to resign, the same way Nwodo was asked to
go when an Enugu High Court made an order against him.
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