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House Speaker, Dimeji Bankole, and 70 PDP Lawmakers Plan To Decamp TO ACN

December 23, 2010

In what promises to be a seismic development in Nigerian politics, Speaker Dimeji Bankole and as many as 70 PDP legislators may soon leave the ruling party and embrace the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).

In what promises to be a seismic development in Nigerian politics, Speaker Dimeji Bankole and as many as 70 PDP legislators may soon leave the ruling party and embrace the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).

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Several sources close to Mr. Bankole as well as two top officials of the ACN told SaharaReporters that the Speaker had been engaged in highly secret negotiations with the ACN to set out terms for his likely switch of political parties. “Speaker Dimeji may yet be the most high profile politician to decamp to ACN after the Minister of Information, Dora Akunyili, resigned from Jonathan's government and joined the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA),” said one of our sources. Mrs. Akunyili intends to run for a senatorial seat.
 
Our sources said Speaker Bankole may be switching parties with 70 lawmakers in the next few weeks, if negotiations go as planned.

The PDP is beset by a deepening crisis that has resulted from the controversy over which geopolitical zone is to produce the party’s presidential candidate. Many Northern members of the ruling party insist that Jonathan is violating an internal arrangement that stipulates the zoning of the presidency to a northern politician for the next four years.

One of our sources indicated that Bankole, who hails from Ogun State, began serious negotiations with ACN after he realized that President Jonathan’s close political ties with Governor Gbenga Daniel of Ogun State was inimical to the speaker’s political ambitions. Mr. Bankole has his eyes on the governorship of Ogun State, but Governor Daniel, who doubles as the southwest campaign coordinator for the Jonathan/Sambo ticket, has made it clear that he does not want the speaker succeeding him. “If the speaker wants to realize his gubernatorial ambition, he has to decamp to the CAN,” said a close associate of Mr. Bankole.

Another source told SaharaReporters that Governor Daniel has completely marginalized former President Olusegun Obasanjo and a former minister of his, Jubrin Martins Kuye. “Chief Obasanjo wants [former military administrator] Olurin, Governor Daniel wants Isiaka Gboyega, and Bankole has to search for a new platform to actualize his ambition,” an insider told Saharareporters.

Mr. Daniel’s closeness to Jonathan has emboldened the governor to throw his weight around with impunity. Last Saturday, Mr. Daniel’s hoodlums disrupted a town hall-style gathering chaired by Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka. The action has further depleted the ruling party’s low political capital in the state.

SaharaReporters called Mr. Bankole’s telephone and sent him text messages seeking his comments, but he had not responded as at press time.

Nationally, the ruling party is going through a rough patch over its contentious zoning policy that has pitched Northern politicians against Mr. Jonathan who is accused of breaching the party’s zoning policy. Last month, a group that styled itself Northern elders chose former Vice President Abukakar Atiku as its consensus candidate. Since coming on board as a “Northern candidate,” Atiku has battled Jonathan in a duel that is tearing the ruling party apart.

But beyond the internal wrangling over its presidential candidate, the PDP is imploding from its long-term unpopularity. One gauge of the party’s wretched image came in a straw poll that was recently pulled from its website in embarrassment. In the poll, more than 70 percent of respondents indicated their preference for a different party other than the PDP. The page with the poll was removed yesterday after it became public.

The ACN is slowly emerging as the PDP’s staunchest opponent. The party has been in a series of merger talks with other political groups after it gained control of several states in court judgments that nullified the fraudulent elections that brought PDP governors to power in some south western states.

An ACN official (member of the  "contact committee" in charge of receiving decamps from other parties ) who spoke to SaharaReporters said the party had not received official notification of interest from Bankole and the other legislators who have been informally negotiating a switch of parties.

Meanwhile, former military dictator Ibrahim Babangida – who lost out to Atiku – is actively seeking to become the presidential candidate of the ANPP, according to several sources. One of those sources revealed that Mr. Babangida was also interested in merger negotiations with other political groups, but none has expressed in working with a man whose era as military dictator was marked by rampant corruption, press repression, unsolved murders, and the infamy of the June 12 annulment.
 

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