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PDP may split
PDP may split
Atiku group bounces back
NDIDI OKAFOR (Abuja), JUSTUS
NWAKANMA, CHARLES OBASI (Lagos)
F ESTERING political bad
blood in the top echelons of ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) may have
brought back to the fore, Vice-President Atiku Abubakar’s 2007 presidential bid.
Saturday Champion has learnt that President Olusegun
Obasanjo’s current face-off with party National Chairman, Chief Audu Ogbeh has
seen a sharp resurgence of the core "Atiku machine" which is touted to have been
the power that saved Ogbeh from removal on Thursday.
PDP insiders have revealed to Saturday
Champion how that machine came into play at the party’s Abuja meeting where
Obasanjo loyalists were said to have been hell bent on having the party chairman
removed.
It is now said to be an open confrontation
between "the president’s men" and the vice-president’s group which might have
used the occasion to re-group for the 2007 duel of which the president is
believed to be against.
What began as honest exchange of letters
between Chiefs Obasanjo and Ogbeh, is now the kernel of powerplay at the soul of
the party.
Chief Ogbeh had simply written a letter to
Chief Obasanjo in which he criticised the President’s handling of the crisis in
Anambra State, with Obasanjo replying and labelling Ogbeh a chameleon.
The move to remove Ogbeh, Saturday
Champion gathered, was stalled by forces said to be loyal to Atiku.
About 20 out of the 24 governors present
at the National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting, were said to have thrown
their political weight behind Ogbeh.
Tension and anxiety had enveloped the
atmosphere at the PDP secretariat in Abuja when early in the day Ogbeh
circulated a notice cancelling the NEC meeting for security reasons.
However, it took the presence of Governor
Abdullahi Kure of Niger State for the venue of the meeting to be opened and the
meeting commenced at 3.28 p.m. with President Olusegun Obasanjo absent.
Although the (PDP) says the face-off has
been resolved, it may yet not be over for the Benue chief as top aides of the
President insist he must go.
Saturday Champion
gathered from presidency sources that some of the aides of the President
dissatisfied with the conduct of Ogbeh, are pressing ahead with the removal of
Ogbeh as National Chairman of the party even before his tenure expires next
year.
"As it stands now, the only thing that can
bring back peace to the party hierarchy is for Ogbeh to go and we will stand our
ground and ensure that this succeeds," the source said.
Saturday Champion
gathered that the purported meeting between the President and the National
Working Committee was not properly constituted, as many of the members allegedly
stayed away.
At the heat of the misunderstanding, 23
PDP governors and other top officers of the party had rallied round Ogbeh,
insisting that Obasanjo was pursuing a vendetta by replying Ogbeh’s letter and
leaking it to the press, a matter which was purely a party affair.
But the presidency having reasoned that
support was tilting towards Ogbeh and weighing against Obasanjo, decided to
leave the governors out of the meeting, choosing rather to select a few who
reached the purported truce.
After Ogbeh had written to the President
complaining of the state of affairs in the country, two top aides of the
President, one of whom was a former aide to the one-time Finance Minister Chief
Anthony Ani and another from the President’s Public Affairs corps, reportedly
wrote a stinging reply and took it to the President at Otta Farm where he sealed
his authority on it before it was eventually leaked to the press.
Editors of four newspapers Saturday
Champion gathered, were called to Ota where they were given the President’s
reply for publication.
This however, backfired as public opinion
swayed against the President who was accused of taking Ogbeh’s letter out of
context, as he had written in his capacity as the Chairman of the party after a
meeting of the NWC which had agreed that the letter should be written.
At the meeting called to broker peace,
Ogbeh was reportedly asked to apologise to Obasanjo but he reportedly insisted
that there were no grounds for apologies as the issues he raised were cogent and
had to be addressed, even as he argued that the decision was not his, but that
of the NWC.
It is based on this insistence that the
aides are pressing for his sack to save the President’s face.
Although the party says that the meeting
resolved the feud, that it however ended on a rancorous note shows that the last
has not been heard of the altercation.
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