BUHARI, TINUBU, TAMBUWAL HOLD SECRET MEETING ON 2015

·   Jonathan hosts select governors to private dinner 

·   Tukur fires aides 

·   Lamido-Amaechi posters surface in Minna

Former Head of State and presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in the 2011 general election, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.), and National Leader of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Senator Bola Tinubu, a few days ago, may have held a private meeting with the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Aminu Tambuwal.

But as the opposition coalition comprising CPC, ACN, All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), which is merging to form the All Progressives Congress (APC), sets its sights on 2015, President Goodluck Jonathan is also making moves to cover his flanks as the election approaches.

In this regard, THISDAY learnt that the president hosted some select Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governors to a private dinner last night at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, where it is believed that issues concerning the party was discussed.

However, it was gathered that the secret meeting, which might have taken place last week between the two leaders of the merging opposition parties and Tambuwal at a private residence in Abuja, is not unconnected to efforts by the opposition to woo the speaker to their party.

The meeting was deemed a strategic gambit by the opposition to get Tambuwal to defect from the ruling PDP on whose platform he was elected to the House of Representatives, to the yet-to-be registered APC as the opposition party’s possible presidential contender in 2015.

It was also learnt that the APC is already considering the zoning of political offices and might zone the presidency to the North-west, Tambuwal’s geopolitical zone.

THISDAY further gathered that the APC is mulling the idea of zoning either the vice-presidential ticket or senate presidency to the South-west zone.

The interim agreement reached at the meeting was that if the senate presidency is zoned to the South-west, then the Office of the Vice-President would be zoned to the South-east.

According to an inside source within the coalition of opposition parties, the decision to allocate the senate presidency to the South-west was being done to pave the way for Tinubu to enter the senatorial contest in Lagos and bank on his past stint as a ranking senator to emerge as senate president.

Should this go according to script, sources said Tinubu’s wife, Oluremi, who is currently the senator representing Lagos Central, will be expected to give up her seat to enable her husband contest.

Though it was uncertain whether Tambuwal has committed to jettisoning the PDP for APC, sources said Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, was seriously considered as the speaker’s possible running mate, but the idea was discarded on the grounds that he is a Muslim.

“Given the current mood of the nation, the party cannot field a Muslim-Muslim ticket right now; otherwise, the pairing (Tambuwal-Fashola) would have been a marriage made in heaven. As a result, the vice-presidential slot has been reserved for the South-east for now,” explained the source.

THISDAY gathered that before the meeting with Tambuwal, APC had considered the former Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) chairman, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, and the former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nasir el-Rufai.

But the source said: “They were seen as too controversial and unmarketable in the north,” hence the need to look elsewhere.

In a related development, the president last night hosted about 15 PDP governors to a private dinner, leaving out eight governors elected on the party’s platform. In all, the PDP has 23 governors.

Although it was not clear why the invitation was not extended to all PDP governors, one governor who spoke to THISDAY said: “There was no formal letter as usual; we were contacted to be the guest of the president to a private dinner by him personally.
“I cannot state categorically the other governors who were invited, but from the calls I made, only 15 were invited.”

On what they would discuss during dinner, the governor said: “Let me not put the cart before the horse, let us wait till the outcome of the meeting.”

The governor also revealed that the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) would be meeting on Wednesday to discuss issues affecting the forum. One of the issues that might be tabled is the forthcoming election of its chairman slated for next month.

Rivers State Governor and current chairman of the forum, Chibuike Amaechi, is seeking re-election, but the presidency is opposed to his re-election bid.

Meanwhile, the National Chairman of PDP, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, has sacked some of his special advisers.

He did not give any reason for their sack, but sources confirmed that there has been a running battle between the personal aides of the chairman and some members of the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party.

Before his removal by a court, the former National Secretary of the party, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, had accused Tukur of running a parallel NWC through his special advisers to the detriment of the official executive organ of the party.

Some of the chairman’s aides that might have been affected by the sack included his principal secretary, Senator Ibrahim Ida, and political adviser, Ahmed Gusau.  Both are from the North-west geopolitical zone. The aides said to have survived the sack include the Special Adviser, Economic Affairs, Olukayode Akindele (South-west); Special Adviser, Inter-party Affairs, Alhaji Mohammed Shittu (North-central); Special Adviser, Monitoring, Hon. Ben Mikko (South-south); and Special Adviser, Governors and Governance, Osaro Onaiwu (South-south).

Tukur met all his special aides on Wednesday last week in a farewell meeting where he thanked them for their services and threw the bombshell informing them of their sack as part of a strategy to re-position his office.
He had informed them that some of them would be reappointed as part of the reorganisation in the party.

But as the party reorganises, presidential campaign posters of the Governor of Jigawa State, Alhaji Sule Lamido, and Amaechi flooded Minna, the Niger State capital, yesterday.

This is the second time the posters of both men as presidential and vice-presidential candidates have surfaced in state capitals.

The A2-sized posters were seen at strategic positions in Minna appealing to people of the state for support.
One poster had the inscription: “Support Alhaji Sule Lamido and Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi for Presidency 2015.”

THISDAY could not ascertain the promoters of the governors’ campaign posters, as nobody at the PDP state secretariat knew who might have pasted the posters.

But as at press time, it was gathered that the State Security Service (SSS) had been mobilised to remove the posters from the street.

Source: Thisday