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Barely 48 hours after they dumped the consensus candidacy of Plateau State governor, Jonah Jang for the chairmanship of Nigeria Governors Forum, NGF, there were indications yesterday that renegade state governors elected on the platform of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP have reached out to relevant PDP leaders restating their loyalty to the party and pledging to return to the fold when the next meeting of the Jang-led NGF would hold.
Nigerian Pilot gathered last night that apart from the embattled governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi and his Kano State colleague, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, “there were considerable indications that they would return next week when the new NGF chairman convenes their meeting here in Abuja,” said a top PDP source who further disclosed that the forum has also acquired a secretariat where all activities would be conducted, “and not in the residence of one man which makes it very convenient for him to manipulate things.”
On the list of PDP governors expected to be at the NGF meeting called by Jang for next week, are members from Adamawa, Kebbi, Sokoto and Niger States. “They will dump whatever position they hold now; and like the prodigal child story goes, we would welcome them back,” Nigerian Pilot was told.
One national officer of the PDP told Nigerian Pilot that the case of Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State was clear to all. The issues he is said to be having with the party structure in his state were allegedly responsible for his coldness towards the Jang leadership. “He believes the party and the national chairman are not fair to him; as a result he refused to be on our side,” the source said.
Nigerian Pilot learnt that the fallouts of last Friday’s botched attempt for a rancor-free meeting of the governors, in the thinking of PDP leadership, finally exposed Amaechi as a willing tool in the hands of the opposition.
Said the source: “no doubt, what happened that day has weakened the NGF completely.”
Giving an insight into the tension-filled meeting that led to allegations of election irregularities that threw up Amaechi as the winner of the NGF chairmanship election, one state governor from the North Central disclosed that: “it is now clear to me that Amaechi and his group had a grand design to return him to office which most of us never knew. But I can now see clearer.”
He said that Niger State governor and current chairman of the Northern Governors Forum, who presided over the emergence of Jang as the consensus candidate for the north and was applauded for his initiative, unknowing to the others had a different script he was working on with Amaechi and the opposition parties.
He said, “We were only to go to the meeting to ratify that choice, only for Amaechi and the director general to call for election. Initially, we refused. But the noise of opposition governors made us to calm awhile.
“When we now called for dissolution of the house before the election could hold, Amaechi refused. Then the director general suddenly brought some sheets of paper for the balloting. And when we started arguing that Amaechi’s predecessors never conducted elections, it was simple ratification of a position earlier taken, he refused to listen. Shockingly, governors of Jigawa, Niger and Kano States threw their weight behind Amaechi. Then Osun State governor started taking pictures of the whole thing. At that point, many of us walked out and let the world know the true position that there was no election.”
Ondo State governor, Olusegun Mimiko who is Jang’s deputy, captured the anger of those who felt betrayed at that meeting thus: “The option open to us would have been to be physical but as responsible people, we couldn’t. But we made it clear to them that what they did was inappropriate. Probably that was in line with their decision to divide the governors forum.”
He said it was wrong for Governor Amaechi to be in office and still conduct the election. “All through that meeting we continued to make a point that Amaechi had to step down, that his tenure had ended,” adding that “even in ordinary village meeting, when tenure ends, the next thing to do is to call for a resolution of the House to elect a temporary leadership who would preside over the election agreed upon by all. Amaechi insisted he was going to be chairman of that election of which he was a candidate. He produced some papers that he called ballot papers. There was no way we could trace the source. We don’t know whether they were pre-marked or whatever.”