Aliyu, Lamido, others have hidden agenda –Presidency

Adamawa State Governor, Murtala Nyako

The Presidency on Thursday accused the five northern governors currently on consultation visits to elder statesmen across the country of harbouring a secret agenda.

It said the agenda of the governors – Aliyu Babangida (Niger); Rabiu Kwakwanso (Kano); Aliyu Wamakko (Sokoto); Sule Lamido (Jigawa); and Murtala Nyako (Adamawa) – was beyond the professed desire to resolve the crisis in the Rivers State chapter of the People Democratic Party.

“These governors have their own agenda. They have already set the agenda long before now. They are just using the Rivers State scenario as an excuse. Whatever the agenda is, they know and God knows, but this continued move and perambulation show that there are things they are not telling us,” Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe, told journalists in Abuja.

Okupe said it would be wrong for Nigerians to assume that Aliyu and his brother governors from the north were concerned with the happenings in Rivers State.

He said the governors would have ended their consultations after they met with President Goodluck Jonathan last week if indeed the issue of the crisis in Rivers and the desire to restore peace to the PDP were the governors’ aim.

The President’s aide said the governors were merely interested in the 2015 elections though he said the odds still favoured Jonathan.

The governors had had a series of meetings with ex-dictators Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar; and ex-Presidents Shehu Shagari and Olusegun Obasanjo.

They also met with Jonathan and reportedly demanded from the President the removal of the National Chairman of the PDP, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, as a precondition for peace in the party.

They were said to be planning to meet other leaders like Gen. Yakubu Gowon, Chief Ernest Shonekan and Lt.-Gen. T.Y. Danjuma (retd.)

Tukur had on Wednesday disowned a statement by his media aide, Oliver Okpala, in which the PDP chairman castigated Aliyu and  the other governors for asking for his removal.

In the denied statement, Tukur  had reportedly described the governors’ demand as unguarded and asked them to desist from acts which he said were capable of truncating the nation’s democracy.

Though The PUNCH learnt that the PDP boss had ratified the Okpala’s statement before jetting out of the country on Tuesday, a denial by another of his aide, Ahmed Gara Gombe, said Tukur did not approve the statement.

Gombe’s statement read in part, “As a matter of fact, the National Chairman is happy that the governors are indeed helping his reconciliation efforts, particularly their meeting with the President (Jonathan) which (Rivers State Governor Rotimi) Amaechi’s face-off with the President was the main issue and substantial progress was made by the governors and the President in fence- mending.”

But Okupe insisted that the governors were not truthful in their words, adding that what they had in mind was not what they were “telling the Nigerian public.”

PUNCH