Former presidential aspirant on the platform of the defunct National Republican Convention (NRC) and chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, says he does not know of any plot by alleged forces against Vice President Atiku Abubakar to draft him (Tukur) into the chairmanship race of the party with a view to stopping the emergence of the Vice President as presidential candidate of the PDP for the 2007 elections.
Reacting last week to our story of July 11, 2004 on the said plot in which he was reportedly being tipped as a replacement for the party’s National Chairman, Chief Audu Ogbeh, the former member of the party’s Board of Trustees from Adamawa said, “I do not know anything about the plot to stop anybody. All that I would like to confirm to you is that I am one of the founders and stakeholders of the PDP and also to confirm to you that I am not looking for any position, let alone the position of National Chairman of the PDP; and, in any case, I can never be a party to checkmate my own younger brother who is the Vice President.
I have no reason for that. “So, I find it very, very disturbing that people go to town with such stories because today, if I am looking for the chairmanship of the PDP, definitely I am the one who will come to look for it; I looked for the presidency of this country and when I looked for it, I went round the whole of this country. I am a politician and I know how to look for a position and it is not in my character to be brought in a manner suggestive of a sinister agendum”.
The former Governor of the old Gongola State, who is in the Adamawa Council of Chiefs with the Vice President, said there was no way he could be drafted to work against the Vice President “because I have no reasons for that kind of a thing; I am his (Vice President’s) elder brother simplicita, coming from the same Council: he is the Turaki of Adamawa and I am Tafida of Adamawa”.
He stated that he had other preference for now, stressing, “I assure you, I am the President of the African Business Roundtable and Chairman of NEPAD Business Group, trying to create wealth for our society, for our country and for our continent and that is my own preference now”.
Tukur, however, explained that if he was called upon to contribute towards building a stronger PDP, he would gladly do so “because as I have earlier said, I am a founder of this party and also a stakeholder; whatever can make the PDP great and strong, I will do it because it is a house I helped to build but what I am doing now is a different scenario altogether.
“Let me also confirm to you that nobody has yet called me to come and do anything to help; if they do, it is a different matter altogether. Then, it will be on my own terms, but nobody has asked me and I am not looking for Audu Ogbeh’s job”.
