Recently, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, National Publicity Secretary of ACN announced that 12 PDP governors had concluded plans to defect to APC. This pronouncement was greeted with condemnation by Olisa Metuh, who labeled APC a party of extremists, party of religious bigots and tribal jingoists, a party doomed to fail.
However, indications are rife that these twelve governors who are anti- Goodluck Jonathan are negotiating for the Presidency of the yet- to-be registered All Progressives Congress (APC).
This is with the understanding that the Presidency of the country would go to the North by 2015.
According to a northern governor who is part of the negotiating team with his colleagues in the APC, the PDP governors wishing to dump the PDP because “the political space to accommodate a northern presidential candidate is closed, as President Jonathan would emerge the presidential candidate of the PDP.”
He added: “We believe that the only thing to assuage our feeling for a northern Presidency is to ensure that we are part of the discussion to present a consensus presidential candidate, not necessarily a governor.”
This position to negotiate the presidency could stand against the PDP governors moving to form their own political party as a third force platform in the 2015 presidential election. According to the source, “this is one of the positions to be agreed in our negotiations with the APC”.
Facts available shows that the PDP governors that consider themselves as… a ‘third force’ believe that their number surpass their counterparts in the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) that are six governors, the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) that have three governors and the Congress for Progressives Change (CPC) that have only a governor from Nasarawa and Imo states that has Rochas Okorocha as a governor.
Sources said that the presidential election would be a straight fight between the North-west and the South-west as a team for the APC and the PDP would be banking on the South-south and South-east, while the two vulnerable zones that are indecisive and too close for call are the North-east and the North central states.
Already, the national leader of the CPC, General Muhammadu Buhari has positioned himself as a presidential aspirant in the race with his posters been displayed all over the country.
“Our plan is that if we present an acceptable northern presidential candidate on the platform of the merged APC, then we can get the mandatory 25 percent votes in South-east states, if not more because the zone is tippled to present the vice presidential candidate for the APC”, the source said.
According to the governor, “the two zones of northeast and north central will play the deciding factor and as such is seen as the battle ground”.
Accordingly, the source said that this is where the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM), the political machinery of late General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua will play a vital role in the political calculation. PDM has members in the PDP, ACN and other political parties and are quietly working in the background and have found themselves occupying the third force slot.
According to the source, “Small they may appear but when you have the former vice president Atiku Abubakar and Chief Tony Anenih in the same team and the new management team which Prince Tonye Princewill attracting young supporters by the hundreds, watch this space as the election could be dicey”.
The PDM members are majority in the PDP but also present in other parties.
THISDAY gathered that both the PDP and the APC are conscious of the PDM challenge, because as the source put it, “They are a movement so can move, consult, discuss and recruit widely whilst holding on to their party cards. The only reason why it has been reactivated is because the members, though inside the PDP, must feel isolated at least at the state level. This links directly to the governors and here is where PDP under Jonathan and the new PDM can find synergy. They both need weaker governors”.
Culled from THISDAY
