PDP govs’ planned meeting with Tukur flops

Tukur-PoliticsA MEETING of the leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its governors scheduled for yesterday in Abuja could not hold due to absence of most of the state chief executives.

At the Legacy House office of the party, only six of the 23 governors and the deputy governors of Niger, Taraba and Katsina states came for the meeting.

Announcing the postponement of the meeting due to poor attendance, the national chairman of the party and convener of the meeting, Dr. Bamanga Tukur, explained that the President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, was away to Germany with some of the governors and he had agreed with the few governors that came that the parley be postponed till another date.

He said: “I wish to thank you for your determining efforts in electing us. I took this overwhelming support from you in particular as a tonic for me to put in you everything within my power to ensure that I give you the best services and promote our great party to the level envisaged by not only the founding fathers but the teeming members of our party.”

Plateau State governor, Jonah Jang, one of the few governors who came for the meeting, blamed the poor attendance on poor communication.

The other PDP governors who came for the aborted parley were Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano, Patrick Yakowa of Kaduna, Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta, Sullivan Chime of Enugu and Idris Wada of Kogi.

Meanwhile, Tukur has summoned members of the PDP caucus in the House of Representatives to an urgent meeting slated for Monday, April 30, 2012.

In a letter addressed to the Speaker of the House, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, and read on the floor of the Chamber, the chairman said the meeting, slated for 9.00 p.m., was necessitated by the need to address the teething problems among others facing the party and the nation.

It was however gathered yesterday that the reason for the nocturnal meeting may not be unconnected with the report of the Farouk Lawan-led ad-hoc committee, which probed the management of the fuel subsidy regime and which was said to have indicted known sponsors of the party and an influential former chairman of the PDP, among others.

Also, the Ekiti State chapter of the PDP yesterday commended the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party for recognising the officers who emerged from the state congress and pleaded with the aggrieved members of the party to embrace peace.

The state chairman of the party, Mr. Makanjuola Ogundipe, praised Tukur for allowing common sense to prevail in resolving the crisis.

Three weeks after the March 18 congress election, the defeated chairmanship candidate, Mr. Akin Omole and members of his group, formed a splinter group.

But the Publicity Secretary of the splinter group, Mr. Jackson Adebayo, said the party’s NWC has not met to take any decision about the crisis in Ekiti State.

Meanwhile, one of the party’s aspirants in the 2011 senatorial elections, Chief Andrew Amobi Okoye, has called on Tukur to quickly visit the issue of representation of the people of Anambra North Senatorial Zone in the present Senate.

Okoye said this will go a long way in not only ensuring the effective representation of the people of Anambra North in the Senate, but also in advancing Tukur’s programme of ‘Reconciliation, Reformation, and Rebirth’.

Okoye, who spoke with newsmen in Lagos, had earlier in a congratulatory message to Tukur said: “I was cleared as an aspirant to contest the Anambra North PDP senatorial primary. Our senatorial primary conducted by Senator Waku was characterised by fraud and irregularities, leaving all party stakeholders to unanimously reject same as lacking credibility.  Please find attached a copy of my PDP certificate of clearance for the senate primary.”

He added: “Shortly after Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo resigned as PDP National Chairman, some party chieftains exploited the situation by imposing candidates without a primary in clear violation of the Electoral Act. All party primary results filed in court by Prince John Emeka, Mr. Alphonsus Uba Igbeke and Mrs. Margery Okadigbo all omitted my name as an aspirant in their falsified results. This automatically voids their claims and leaves me as the only aspirant that is not laden by illegality to be sworn into the Senate without further delay.”