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Letter war: Plot to remove Ogbeh flops
By Tony Eluemunor
Paul Mumeh (Abuja)
and Tunde Abatan
(Lagos)
A
well calculated plot to remove National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic
Party (PDP) National Chairman Audu Ogbeh hit the rocks on Thursday night as his
loyalist returned fire for fire.
At
the party’s well-attended National Executive Committee (NEC) parley, held
at its national secretariat in Abuja, a motion seeking to sack him was defeated
by the superior logic in the argument of Ogbeh’s supporters.
The
motion had been repeatedly raised by Nassarawa State Governor Abdullahi Adamu
(who was removed as Chairman of Governors’ Forum because of his
pro-President Olusegun Obasanjo stance), Enugu State Governor Chimaroke Nnamani
and an ex-officio member from the South West.
The
meeting held amid an unusual security beef up and high tension.
Those
who attended included 24 governors, principal officers of the National
Assembly, led by Senate President Adolphus Wabara, and House Speaker Aminu
Masari. They expressed grave concern about the unsavoury communication between
Obasanjo and Ogbeh, “whereas there could have been better ways to handle
the matter”.
At
exactly 1.35 p.m. Ogbeh had issued a terse statement cancelling the well
publicised NEC meeting on grounds of insecurity, but events later proved that
it must hold.
Obasanjo’s
loyalists, who ordered the shut conference hall opened, had stormed the venue
with a resolve to hold the meeting with or without Ogbeh.
The
were led by PDP Board of Trustees
(BOT) Chairman Tony Anenih and included Governors Peter Odili (Rivers), Nnamani
(Enugu), Abdullahi Adamu (Nasarawa), Segun Agagu (Ondo), Olagunsoye Oyinlola
(Osun), Ahmed Makarfi (Kaduna) and Abdulkadir Kure (Niger).
Later,
scores of other governors sympathetic to Ogbeh, who met at Akwa Ibom State
Governor’s Lodge in Abuja, arrived and asked him to commence the meeting
and said they were behind him.
With
that assurance, Ogbeh sauntered into the conference hall at exactly 3.28 p.m.
and opened the parley.
An
ex-officio member from the South West first fired the salvo that Ogbeh and the
NEC members be suspended for the embarrassing letter he wrote to the President,
which generated the conflict.
However,
an argument by BOT member Emmanuel Osamor that the motion must be in tandem
with the party constitution put paid to the move.
About
an hour later, Adamu attempted to move the motion, counselling that the NEC should not play the ostrich in
a matter such as this.
His
voice was subsequently dwarfed. Nnamani He referred to the letter written by
Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka on the PDP infighting, which said it is quite
unfortunate that people who are regarded as leaders and who are supposed to
work for the unity of the country and find solutions to its numerous problems
engage in quarrel to satisfy their personal egos.
House
of Representatives member, Yemi Arokodare also said that “the diatribe of
Wole Soyinka is a food for thought
to the political class, we should all be conscious of what we are doing
to justify the confidence which our people have in us”.
Ayo
Adeseun, and AD member from Oyo State in the house added that “Professor
Wole Soyinka has the constitutional right to express his views on national
issues. I believe the Peoples democratic Party (PDP) should put its house in
order to avoid derailing our nascent democracy”,
Human
rights activist and legal mind Olisa
Agbakoba threw his weight behind the stance of Soyinka, attributing the
country’s woes to the process of the formation of political parties.
However,
former federal Attorney General and Justice Minister Richard Akinjide,
political activist Tunji Otegbeye and Trasparency International (Nigeria)
Chairman Ishola Williams all expressed interest in the letter but said they are
yet to read it.
The recent exchange of letters between the Chairman of the
PDP and the President of the nation makes extremely dismal reading. First, let
us begin by stressing that this is an affirmation of what we have insisted on
from the very beginning - that the obvious criminalities that began with the
abduction of a governor go beyond the personalities involved. They transcend
the Chairman, the President and the ruling party, they reach beyond the state
of Anambra and deeply into the very core of national integrity and the
democratic imperative.
For now, let me state clearly that the President's response
is an embarrassing catalogue of self-indictment. It does not make the slightest
effort to answer the Chairman's remarkably restrained charge of, at the very
least, a dereliction of responsibility or, at the worst, a complicity in the
seamy intrigues that have led to the organised destruction of state
institutions and the sustained destabilisation of governance in one of
Nigeria's states. President Obasanjo's response is the equivalent the Yoruba
saying - o fi ete s'ile, o npa lapalapa. - one ignores the leprosy, continues
to massage the ringworm.
Let
me, by the way, absolutely affirm
Audu Ogbeh's claim that this yet ongoing saga has become the talk of the
world and brought the nation to ridicule and contempt. I encounter questions
everywhere, unflattering and condescending commentaries. Anyone who still
believes that the Nigerian nation is not a world concern is bound to have a
rude awaken
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