Ahead of the scheduled meeting today between President Goodluck Jonathan is back from London and he is to meet with the seven Peoples Democratic Party governors who had walked out of the party’s convention on August 31, some political elders in the North have set up a committee in an effort to achieve a seamless defection of the governors to the opposition All Progressives Congress.
The suspension of Chief Olagunsoye Oyinlola from PDP is expected to be among the most important issues to be dealt with at the meeting. READ THISDAY
The committee of the northern elders is said to comprise eminent personalities, including former military president Ibrahim Babangida, former minister of finance, Alhaji Adamu Ciroma, and Nigeria’s former permanent representative at the United Nations, Alhaji Maitama Sule. The panel is to address the hitches in the long expected movement of the governors, also called G7 governors, to the opposition coalition. The complications have bordered basically on disagreements over the control of party structures in the respective states governed by the seven governors.
But the meeting seems unlikely tonight because the president is scheduled to leave London today at 1400 hours GMT and arrive at the Presidential Wing of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport about 2000 hours. This means the meeting may either hold very late or would be rescheduled.
If the discussion, which has been described as a make-or-break gathering, holds today, Jonathan would be meeting the governors of Kwara State (Ahmed Abdulfatah), Jigawa State (Sule Lamido), Sokoto State (Aliyu Wamakko), Niger State (Babangida Aliyu), Kano State (Rabiu Kwankwanso), Rivers State (Chibuike Amaechi), and Adamawa State (Murtala Nyako) to try to reach a peace agreement in the current crisis rocking the ruling party.
THISDAY was reliably informed that the G7 governors would be insisting on the reinstatement of Oyinlola as the party’s national secretary. Oyinlola was one of the state delegates, led by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who, along with the G7 governors, had staged a walkout in protest at the PDP national convention to form the New PDP.