The long-running battle between President Goodluck Jonathan and the Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi has restarted with the Presidency initiating a fresh bid to ensure that Amaechi is sacked as chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum.
According to sources, 15 governors led by the Akwa Ibom State Governor and Chairman of the Peoples’ Democratic Party Governor’s Forum, Godswill Akpabio met with President Jonathan on Sunday night in Abuja ahead of the NGF meeting slated for Wednesday.
14 of the governors were from the PDP with Anambra State Governor, Peter Obi of the All Progressives’ Grand Alliance being the only opposition governor.
A top source also confided in this correspondent that before the Forum, a special dinner was held to “essentially mobilise support for the emergence of Katsina State Governor Ibrahim Shema as the next chairman of the NGF.”
He said, “We have been able to secure the understanding of our governors especially our brothers from the North. I believe for the sake of balance, it makes a lot of sense to have a northern PDP governor as chairman of the NGF because we already have Governor Akpabio, a Southerner as chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum.”
The source noted that out of the 36 members of the NGF, 13 were from opposition parties, of which least two governors in the opposition parties were likely to throw their weight behind any candidate supported by the PDP.
However, the issue of elections in the NGF is not on the agenda for the meeting tomorrow.
When the Special Adviser to the President on Political Matters, Ahmed Gulak was contacted for his comments, he said that the only interest of the Presidency was in upholding the rule of law.
He however added that as a loyal member of the PDP, the President would be delighted to have another PDP member take over from Amaechi once his tenure ended.
When asked whether Jonathan would be ready to work with the embattled chairman of the NGF if re-elected, the presidential aide said the issue of re-election of Amaechi did not arise.
Gulak said, “The fact that the President met with the PDP governors was an indication that he is united with the governors. When has it become an aberration for him to meet the governors?
“It is not about removing Amaechi. Amaechi’s tenure as NGF chairman is ending this April, so nobody is talking about his removal. When Bukola Saraki’s tenure ended, he handed over to Amaechi. Since Amaechi’s tenure is ending too, he must hand over to somebody else.
“The President is interested in any PDP governor, not necessarily Shema, taking over from Amaechi at the expiration of his tenure. There is no re-election for Amaechi. His tenure has expired except if he wants to extend his tenure and there is no tenure elongation in the NGF.”
However, efforts to get the Rivers State Commissioner for Information and Communications, Mrs. Ibim Semenitari, and the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Mr. David Iyofor, to react to Gulak’s statement were not fruitful as Semenitari was indisposed, and Iyofor promised to call this correspondent back, but did not do so.
But a dependable source in Rivers State Government House, Port Harcourt said that Amaechi was working on being re-elected as the forum’s chairman.
The source, who claimed that a part of the rules governing the forum had long been altered to accommodate any incumbent chairman seeking a second term to do so.
He added, “I can tell you that the governor will not be stampeded into quitting. He will prefer to stand the election and be defeated than shying away from it because some outsiders are now interested in displacing him. Mind you, Governor Amaechi is a good fighter.”
The PDP had in its bid to whittle down Amaechi influence as NGF chairman created the forum of its governors headed by Akpabio. Two weeks ago, a court sacked Ameachi’s loyalists from the helm of affairs at the Rivers State chapter of the PDP.
It took only 24 hours for the national secretariat of the PDP to inaugurate a new executive council of the party in the state.