President Goodluck Jonathan showed off his diplomacy skills when he stepped in to intervene in the feud between the National Chairman of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Bamanga Tukur and the National Convention Committee headed by Professor Jerry Gana.
According to sources in Abuja, the president was saddened at the information that the national chairman had locked out Gana and the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, who had gone to brief him on the plans of the committee.
It was gathered that the development had enraged members of the National Assembly, who were said to have sent words to the party that Tukur would be declared a persona non grata in the National Assembly going by the way he treated the Senate number two man.
Jonathan was said to have reached out to the leaders of the National Assembly upon his arrival from China last week and also followed up with a meeting with Tukur and key stakeholders in the planned convention, during which he appealed for calm and insisted that the convention must go on as scheduled.
It was gathered that Tukur had placed a stop work order on the Gana committee in order to achieve two things, ensure that members of the National Working Committee were integrated into key positions in the convention committee and in another breathe keep the convention at bay for as long as possible.
Sources said that it appeared Tukur was not comfortable with the likely return of former members of the dissolved National Working Committee and that he was already feeling at home with the new team constituted by officers in acting capacity.
Tukur was also said to have told the Gana committee to yield subcommittees of the convention on election, screening, welfare, accreditation, media and protocol to his Working Committee and that a refusal to do that led to a face-off.
It was, however, confirmed that President Jonathan was bitter that Tukur nearly stalled the effort of the party’s National Executive Committee meeting to restore peace and that he ordered a smooth working relationship henceforth.
The president also insisted that the August 31 date fixed for the convention by the Gana Committee remained sacrosanct.