- Southern PDP leaders to reach out to their northern colleagues for understanding
By Ishaya Ibrahim, News Editor
When Nigeria’s main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), announced on Thursday that it had zoned the position of the national chairman of the party to the north, many Nigerians were surprised.
Before the dramatic turn of events, the body language of the party had led many to conclude that they planned to retain the chairmanship in the south while the presidential candidate in the 2023 elections will come from the north.
Most of those who jostled for the chairmanship seat, including Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, former governor of Osun State, are all southerners.
On the other hand, many of those rumoured to be nursing presidential ambition, including former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, are northerners.
Even when the party constituted a 44-member Zoning Committee headed by Enugu State governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, ahead of the National Convention scheduled to hold October 30 and 31, the committee met twice last week in Enugu but was unable to reach a consensus on the subject.
That was when the PDP Governors Forum stepped in.
A source privy to the behind the scenes intrigues that finally took the chairmanship seat to the north told TheNiche on Saturday that even the governors could not arrive at a consensus and opted for voting in a bid to break the impasse and save the party from implosion.
According to the highly placed source who pleaded anonymity, northerners were fully mobilized to wrestle the presidential ticket from the south.
But the governors saved the day for the prospects of a southern presidential candidate.
While the ruling APC controls 22 states, the PDP is in charge of 13. The remaining one state, Anambra, is led by the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).
Narrating what happened, our source said: “When the 44-member zoning committee could not agree, the governors stepped in and held a meeting on Wednesday night at the Akwa Ibom governor’s residence in Abuja.
“It was a marathon meeting and the governors elected on the platform of the PDP wanted to achieve a consensus on the contentious issue of party leadership but it was not possible and they opted for voting. That proved to be the magic wand.
“After the defection of three PDP governors to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), the party now has 13 governors under the umbrella of the PDP Governors Forum chaired by the Governor of Sokoto State, Aminu Tambuwal.
“Of the 13, five – Tambuwal (Sokoto State), Samuel Ortom (Benue State), Bala Mohammed (Bauchi State), Ahmadu Fintiri (Adamawa State) and Darius Ishaku (Taraba State) are from the north while the remaining eight are from the south – Oyo, Enugu, Abia, Delta, Akwa Ibom, Edo, Rivers, Bayelsa.
“When it came to voting, Tambuwal who presided over the meeting as the Chairman of the PDP Governors Forum, abstained. But three of his colleagues from the north – Bala Mohammed, Ahmadu Fintirin and Darius Ishaku voted that the chairmanship should be retained in the south.
“But the whole eight Southern PDP governors voted that the chairmanship seat should go to the north. They were joined by Ortom. So, when the votes were tallied, nine governors were in favour that the seat be zoned to the north while three favoured that it should be retained in the south with one abstention.
“That was what happened. Rather than the 44-member zoning committee, the governors decided. They were the jinx breakers. They only communicated their decision to the committee members who met on Thursday and just announced the decision of the governors.
“That shows how powerful the governors are. They are the major power brokers in the two dominant political parties because they are the major financiers of the parties.”
On Thursday, at the reconvened meeting of the zoning committee in Enugu, Ugwuanyi made the announcement.
But TheNiche gathered that even if the governors didn’t tilt the presidential balance to the south, ten members of the zoning committee from the north had already agreed to support the south and vote for a northern chairman.
Ugwuanyi said other positions within the National Working Committee (NWC) will be swapped between the north and the south.
He also emphasized that the committee was not asked to decide the zoning of the presidential ticket.
“The mandate of the committee does not include zoning of offices of the president, vice president, and other executive and legislative offices of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“The decision of the committee to zone the offices of the party does not in any way affect the same executive and legislative offices in Nigeria. The zoning of offices on PDP has traditionally been between the North and the South of Nigeria.
“The decision of the PDP zoning committee is in line with the constitution of the party on zoning, and rotation of party, and national offices in the interest of justice, equity and fairness. Consequently, the current offices being held by officers in the southern zone of the country, namely south-west, south-east and south-south zone should swap places with offices currently in the northern zone of Nigeria namely north-west north-east, north-central zones,” he told journalists.
With the resolution to zone the seat to the north, our source disclosed that there is a possibility that the convention may be postponed to enable the PDP put its house in order.
Since the announcement on Thursday, there has been deafening silence from some northern power brokers who are believed to be interested in running for the presidency.
The idea of postponing the convention may also be to reach out to those aspirants in order to pacify them.
Our source said the process of healing has already started.
“Southern party leaders are already reaching out to their northern colleagues to appease them. The message is simple and straightforward – there is no victor and no vanquished.
“The governors stepped in to save the party from imploding. The decision to zone the chairmanship to the north was taken to ensure peace in the PDP and secure the unity of the country.”
Most southern PDP leaders who spoke to TheNiche said it would be manifestly unfair to retain the presidency in the north after eight straight years of a northern president.
“This is not about political party. It does not matter whether the incumbent president is a member of the PDP or APC. PDP constitution has a rotation clause and power rotation has always been between north and south and the fact remains that President Muhammadu Buhari is from the core north. Equity, justice and fair play demand that after eight years of his presidency, power should gravitate to the south,” one of the leaders said.
“Anyone has the right to contest. But for the sake of the country and the PDP, we are reaching out to our northern colleagues to say nobody has been defeated. It is not a power contest and therefore, no one needs to go home sulking.
“We are doing that individually and collectively. The task before all of us is to unite so that we can face our common foe, APC, squarely in the 2023 elections. So, the north has not been defeated and there is no reason for anyone to feel bad.”
Acknowledging that even with the zoning, nothing stops anyone from anywhere from contesting for the presidential ticket as it has happened in the past when the former governor of Kano State, late Abubakar Rimi, ran for the party’s ticket even when it was zoned to the south, PDP leaders told TheNiche that all efforts will be made to dissuade members of the party from the north insisting on running for the presidency in order not to polarize the party as it goes into the 2023 polls.
There is strong sentiment that if a northerner picks the presidential ticket of the PDP in 2023, many southerners may be forced to play anti-party by voting for any other political party that flies a southern presidential ticket, even if it is the APC.
“The governors are aware of this strong sentiment. They wanted to avert the 2015 scenario when President Goodluck Jonathan’s insistence on running for a second term after serving out the President Yar’Adua term and doing one term of his own forced many PDP members from the north to play anti-party. They voted for Buhari.
“We don’t want that to happen again in 2023. That is why we are pleading with our colleagues from the north to show some understanding. The sentiment is very strong,” our source concluded.
