The fence-mending meeting President Goodluck Jonathan held with governors elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party on Sunday night was deadlocked, The Eagle Online can report.
The meeting, which was attended by 16 governors, ended at about 3am on Monday without a resolution of the crisis within the party.
Another session has therefore been scheduled for Tuesday.
In attendance at the meeting was the Chairman of the party’s Board of Trustees, Chief Tony Anenih.
Present at the meeting were Governors Babangida Aliyu (Niger), Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso (Kano), Isa Yuguda (Bauchi), Murtala Nyako (Adamawa), Idris Wada (Kogi), Liyel Imoke (Cross River), Godswill Akpabio (Akwa Ibom) and Abdulfatah Ahmed (Kwara).
Others were Emmanuel Uduaghan (Delta), Ibrahim Shema (Katsina), Mukhtar Ramallan Yero (Kaduna), Garba Umar (Taraba Acting Governor), Saiidu Dakingari (Kebbi), Theodore Orji (Abia), Ibrahim Dankwambo (Gombe), Jonah Jang (Plateau).
Speaking with State House correspondents on Monday, the Political Adviser to the President, Ahmed Gulak, lambasted former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, saying he is indebted to the ruling party.
Gulak explained further that having been welcomed back after leaving the PDP and even given a waiver to contest the primaries in 2011, the best Abubakar should have done was to continue to protect the party.
The Political Adviser also noted that the crisis within the party is all about individual interest, adding that the moles in the party have been identified and would be taken care of.
Gulak said: “I was surprised because Atiku is supposed to know more than another person that there is no party like PDP.
“He left PDP and went to ACN (Action Congress of Nigeria) and he came back to PDP because he discovered that outside PDP there is no party.
“So he had to come back and he was even given the waiver to contest the primary election in 2011.
“Atiku should be grateful to PDP.
“Atiku is indebted to PDP and the best way to continue to pay the debt is to protect PDP. “It is all politics and politics is about interest and we are harmonising, we are talking, we are dialoguing, because the PDP as a family will not allow any of its members to go away and even the members that want to go away, we will make bold to tell them that there is no party as good as PDP.
“So it is a matter of dialogue,
“it is a matter of discussion and God willing this problems will be surmounted.
“It can never be the end of PDP.
“PDP has been there from 1998.
“It is only PDP that has still maintained its name and identity.
“The other people you are talking about started as AD, transformed to AC, transformed to CAN.
“You know they have lost their identity.
“It is only PDP that has consistently maintained its identity and its name so there is no party that can beat PDP.”
On the Sunday night meeting, Gulak said President Jonathan listened to the governors
He said: “Politics is about interests and whatever somebody says is how can his interest be protected and they have put on the table what they want, or put on the table what it should be and the leader has carefully listened and analyzed it and we keep on talking”.
Asked if the aggrieved governors wanted the National Chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, removed, Gulak fired back: “You cannot remove the national chairman like that.
“He was elected and you will remember that of all the offices, INEC (the Independent National Electoral Commission) observed that only the position of the national chairman and the financial secretary were properly done and that is why we had do to the special national convention to properly elect the other officers.
“There are processes, there are provisions of the institution, there are provisions of the electoral act.
“We should not act outside the laws and we must act within the extant laws of the land.
“And because the PDP is a law abiding party, we must entrench internal democracy.
“You cannot come and say, remove Mr. A or Mr. B and you cannot say for example remove governor A.
“There are processes of removal.
“The constitution is clear about it.
“And I want to plead with all PDP leaders and members, especially the senior stakeholders, to continue dialoguing.
“You don’t win war at the battle front, you win war on the table.”
The Political aide pleaded with the aggrieved stakeholders to embrace dialogue so that the party could come out of the crisis stronger.
His words: “We want to plead with all members of this political party to keep on dialoguing, discussing, because the opposition out there wants the party to split and there are moles in the PDP.
“We have discovered them and Insha Allah all PDP stakeholders, especially our field commanders who are the governors, have discovered this and we are talking.”
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