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The fight over who controls the party machinery and where and to whom the party’s presidential flag should go, is generating intense heat in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Up in arms are Governors, who through their not so subtle financial strength have funded the party since the All Progressives Congress (APC), supplanted it and became the governing party.
As it was the case, when the PDP held sway for 16 years at Aso Rock, and indeed nationally, Governors of the PDP, with Governor Nyesom Wike as arrowhead, have drawn the battle line. They want to be on the driving seat in deciding who should be the party’s flag bearer in the coming presidential election. You can amend that to read, they want possibly one of the governors, to be the flag bearer of the party. Read that too to mean: Nyesom Wike, Aminu Tambuwal, Bala Mohammed, Udom Emmanuel, Ifeanyi Okowa, want to be the kingmakers and one of them probably the king himself.
The case of Nyesom Wike is well known. It is mainly him and a sprinkling of a few others who carried the party on their shoulders in the last almost seven years. Wike has played the role of the leader of the party, funding it, gathering like minds together, and almost daily “terrorising” the ruling APC government. It was he who put in place the recently dissolved executives of the party, headed by Uche Secondus. To a large extent, he singlehandedly chose a large number of the members of the current executive council of the party. If insiders are to be believed, he brought most of the funds for the convention. Don’t ask me from where he got the money to so do.
For someone who insiders say is not interested in running for the office of president, but Tuesday warned that no one can stop him should he decide to run for the office, his criss crossing the country, flying his state’s private jet from one state capital to the other, has raised curious eyes even as he has succeeded in mobilising the governors to work together as a team. Nevertheless, how far he has succeeded in his second agenda, zoning the presidency to the South, is yet to be seen.
Recall his anger during the last primaries of the party which was held in Port Harcourt. That was when the party’s flag bearer in the person of former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, emerged despite Wike”s wishes. Today, all PDP presidential aspirant know that to ignore the Rivers State Governor, or discount his influence in the party, is to court trouble in capital letters. As is, Wike seems to have learnt one or two lessons from his failure to have his way at the last primaries. Hence, it seems, he has gone into alliance with all the governors of the party to form a gangatuan coalition to forestal an Atiku, or anyone without their backing, from becoming the flag bearer of the party in the coming Presidential Primaries of the party.
How this will impact the ambition of the Bauchi State governor, Bala Mohammed, who is a Wike co-conspirators, since he is also pounding the pavements, consulting party leaders across the country, is yet to be known.
One needs no clairvoyant powers to guess who the opponents of this gang up and the major targets of the governors are. No doubt, Atiku Abubakar, Bukola Saraki and former Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano State. They are not only nursing presidential ambitions, but have teamed up with some leaders of the party who the governors are trying to sideline. Knowing Atiku Abubakar and Bukola Saraki as major mobilisers, with their own followers in the party, the die appears cast.
Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, is particularly a target for two main reasons. One, he is considered too old, being over 70 years old. Two, for those of the governors, who think the post should be zoned to the South, he is from the wrong side of the geographical divide. What is, however, unstated is that he is not beholden to any of the Governors, and he has enough resources to match them Naira for Naira and Dollar for Dollar. He easily is one of the party leaders who has significant followers but is seen as not being interested in funding of the party.
But undeterred, the Atiku Abubakar team, headed by Alegho Raymond Dokpesi, himself a great mobiliser, are pounding the streets, literally canvasing support for their aspirant. In trying to woo South Easterners, for example, the Atiku team is telling them to shelve their ambition for now and wait for an Atiku presidency which will run only one term and thereafter hand the mantle to an Igbo son or daughter for that matter.
The team of former Senate President, Anyim Pius Anyim, is not listening to the Atiku Abubakar wait for me to run first gospel. There is no doubt that Anyim is a serious aspirants who is not just campaigning to be president of South East origin but is building coalitions across the country, in an effort to be accepted and voted as the flag bearer of the party. He seems to enjoy the graces of the Nyesom Wike group even though he is not a Governor. The South East too appear to be standing solidly behind him. Though it is early days yet, no other high calibre aspirant from the South East has emerged in the PDP.
Also though he has continued to say that his aspiration is not based on zoning the PDP presidential ticket to the South East, it is clear that he would be the major beneficiary should the PDP yield to the cries of the Igbos in the South East and zone the presidential ticket to them. Groups after groups are springing up in his support. He is one aspirant to watch closely as the race gathers momentum.