Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governors’ assurances to support President Bola Tinubu’s administration have left it with a dilemma on the way forward as it begins the process of appointing a new national chairman next week.
The main opposition party holds its National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting next Thursday to determine the fate of Ambassador Iliya Damagun who has been its acting national chairman since the resignation of Dr. Iyorchia Ayu over a year ago.
The PDP constitution requires the party to pick Ayu’s successor from the north-central region where the former party boss is from.
But with most of its state governors said to be eager to maintain a positive relationship with the president, stakeholders are said to be torn between whether to allow the emergence of a pliant party man to lead the envisaged cooperation with the administration or pick a hardcore politician who can lead any effort to take the government to task.
Party sources on Thursday refused to rule out the need not to rock the Tinubu administration’s boat and the lack of clarity of the direction it might go as some of the major reasons the PDP had steered clear of a NEC meeting for about 15 months.
It was gathered that the support for the Tinubu administration is linked to the April 2023 pledge by Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State and then governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, to Tinubu upon his election as the next president.
Both governors, who operated under the G5 opposed to the election of the presidential candidate of the PDP, had joined their All Progressives Congress (APC) counterparts to visit the then president-elect at his Defence House, Abuja temporary accommodation to assure him of their cooperation and support for his government.
“We are here to let him know that elections are over – this is governance and we will do our best to give him support,” Makinde had said at the time.
Also, in expressing support for the incoming Tinubu administration, Wike had said at the meeting: “Just like my friend (Makinde) said, a winner has emerged and therefore it is alright to give necessary support in the interest of Nigeria. I have the confidence that he has what it takes to turn Nigeria around.”
The former Rivers State governor has since joined the ruling APC as the minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and had ensured that his loyalists in the Rivers House of Assembly elected under the PDP also defected to the ruling party while he insisted on being a member of the main opposition party.
Other members of the G5 who have remained in the PDP have also said that they will work for the re-election of President Tinubu in 2027 as revealed by former Benue State governor, Sam Ortom, who said recently: “If we work to ensure Bola Ahmed Tinubu succeeds, there will be tomorrow for anybody to even contest election at all.
“Our leader, Nyesom Wike, has already made a declaration that in 2027, we are supporting President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.”
Akwa Ibom State governor Umo Eno has also said that he will continue to support President Tinubu, noting: “I will continue to support President Tinubu. Do you know why? Because he does not interfere with the judicial process.”
A former member of the PDP National Working Committee (NWC) affirmed to the Nigerian Tribune that the PDP governors have an agreement to support President Tinubu while the president is expected to extend the same gesture to them, saying: “That is while no PDP governor bothers himself with opposition matters.”
“PDP is not the same party. When the governors (now former governors) decided to take over the party and installed people who had no knowledge of party administration who became mercantile in their approach, it was no longer a question of ideas but whether the party administrators could get (plots of) land from Wike,” the former PDP leader volunteered.
However, the chairman of the PDP Governors Forum and governor of Bauchi State, Bala Mohammed, has allayed fears that the PDP is on the verge of being handed over to the ruling party, dismissing suggestions that leading members of the forum to visit President Tinubu at the presidential villa, was to pledge allegiance to him.
The Director General of the PDP Governors Forum, Cyril Maduabum, had explained that the recent visit to the president was not to acquiesce to his desires but on the resolution of the crisis in Rivers State.
“Senator Bala Mohammed is not trying and will not do anything to hand over the PDP, a leading and formidable opposition party to the President, who was elected on the platform of another party. The situation in Rivers State on October 30, 2023, was not just a PDP affair,” Maduabum claimed.
