A high-powered meeting on Saturday to broker peace between embattled President Goodluck Jonathan and a splinter group of governors of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) became deadlocked, SaharaReporters has learned from several sources involved in the tense parley.
A high-powered meeting on Saturday to broker peace between embattled President Goodluck Jonathan and a splinter group of governors of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) became deadlocked, SaharaReporters has learned from several sources involved in the tense parley.
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Mr. Jonathan had initiated the meeting after several simmering disputes within the PDP boiled over, creating a schism in the party. At the party’s mini-convention at the Eagle Square in Abuja last week, former Vice President Abubakar Atiku walked off the venue with a group of eight governors. After storming out of the convention, members of the Atiku group converged at the Musa Yar’Adua Convention Center in Abuja where they announced the formation of a “New PDP.” The group elected its own set of national officers and read a litany of grievances against Mr. Jonathan and the Bamanga Tukur-led faction of the party.
Several PDP sources told SaharaReporters that President Jonathan, who was caught shaking his head and dozing off at the venue of the convention, was badly shaken by the emergence of two factions within the party.
Our sources said Saturday’s peace meeting did little to narrow the gulf between the two factions. One source at the Presidency blamed the lack of progress on the fact that only 16 governors bothered to attend. “We heard that some of the governors practically rushed out of Abuja to avoid meeting with Mr. President,” one source said.
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“It is serious that the president summoned PDP state governors to attend a meeting to seek [a] solution to issues that divide us as a party and only 16 of them showed up at the meeting,” said a top aide to Mr. Jonathan. He added that four of the governors in attendance were part of the group that staged a walk-out at the mini-convention.
Our Presidency source told Saharareporters that Mr. Jonathan pleaded with the governors at the deadlocked peace meeting to “sheathe their swords and allow a bigger forum of PDP governors to discuss their grievances.”
One of the rebelling governors, who did not attend the meeting, told SaharaReporters that his group had mandated Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano to convey their two conditions to Mr. Jonathan. “We are demanding that he should renounce his intention to run in 2015 as a presidential candidate on the platform of the PDP and secondly to allow a fresh, all-inclusive convention of the party as soon as possible.”
One of the governors in attendance at the meeting told SaharaReporters that a decision was made to resume the peace meeting on Tuesday to enable all parties to “consult with their groups and harmonize their positions.”
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