Anxiety by members of the Peoples Demo-cratic Party (PDP) has heightened over appointment into the boards of parastatal corporations and agencies as the party leadership last Thursday reviewed the process of nomination in order to ensure that those who worked for the party are accommodated on the boards.
There are about 150 boards’ positions to be filled, following the recent dissolution of the former boards. Sunday Vanguard learnt that each State has been allocated six chairmanship slots and twenty-six membership slots, which are to be filled by the leaders, both in the party and government.
Party members who are yet to be appointed see this as the last opportunity to be rewarded for their support and loyalty, hence they have intensified lobby both in their respective States and Abuja. It was learnt that those who looking up to Abuja are jostling for the most important Boards (otherwise referred to as Grade A Boards), which fall within President Olusegun Obasanjo jurisdiction.
These include Boards of Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Petroleum Products Pipeline and Marketing Company (PPPMC), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA), among others.
Sunday Vanguard gathered the presidential list is likely to comprise political gladiators whose profile is worrisome to their State Governors and have become victims of executive neglect at the State level. The politicians are, as learnt, loyalists of the President, who worked to make his re-election possible.
A Presidency source hinted that some Governors, worried that the President may empower the men whose profile is worrisome to them, had pleaded with him (Obasanjo) to allow them make input into the presidential list of chairman and members of powerful boards.
The President was said to have rejected their plea and suggestion on the ground that he did not interfere in their selection at the State level and so, they should respect his rational judgment to make his appointment independent of them.
Sources close to the National Secretariat of the party hinted that the party leadership wants to ensure that loyalists of some power bloc are accommodated, but feelers said that it has been a battle of wits within the party folds in all the zones to fill the slots allocated to them.
Mutual suspicion along the General Ibrahim Babangida/Vice President Atiku Abubakar political divides has assumed the center stage, making the process, as learnt, very painstaking and rigorous.
The NEC meeting was said to have cautioned Governors and leaders of the party in the ones and States against marginalizing those who deserve to be appointed as that could precipitate crisis. The party leadership, according to a source, advised that wide-ranging consultations and explanations need to be done so that no one will be offended as to upstage the applecart.
The appointment process is expected to be fully perfected this week and announced consequently within the next few weeks.
