The National Chairman of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, has said that media reports claiming that he is under pressure to resign his position from the party are false, as he has no intentions of doing so.
Tukur, in an email to journalists on Monday said that he had accepted to serve as the chairman of the PDP because he was convicted that his wealth of experience would benefit the nation and that his motivation as the PDP chairman has been to use this wealth of experience to the nation’s benefit.
He said, “Let me reiterate that I am not resigning and I have no intention of doing so as an elected National Chairman of the PDP.
“I accepted to become chairman based on my conviction that I can use my wealth of experience to help my party and my country.
“I am not looking for anything at my age other than putting it on record that God has helped me, and then, I am using the opportunities he gave me to serve the rest of Nigeria to the best of my abilities.
He lamented that enemies of the PDP had misled the media to make several failed predictions about his position as the PDP chairman
Tukur attributed the negative reports to saboteurs within and outside the party, whom he called ‘black legs focusing on reporting falsehood on the party’s activities at both state and national levels.”
However, he did not give indications as to who he thought these people were, only disclosing that their efforts would be useless.
Tukur stated that he had a good relationship with President Goodluck Jonathan and other elders of the party with whom he had been strategising to seek the necessary solutions to the problems of the party.
Tukur said, “I had hardly settled down in office when some newspapers predicted that I would not last three months. Later, some newspapers wrote that I would resign in December. Another one said two days ago that I had been asked to resign.
“Well, I have spent more than one year in office and they still continue to write same and same thing all over. I really do not understand whether Bamanga Tukur is really the media problem, or the problem of faceless individuals who are manufacturing the miserable reports.”
The dissolution of the Adamawa PDP exco was said to have been unilateral formed part of the battle between the PDP chairman and the Adamawa State Governor, Murtala Nyako, where hails from.
Tukur has been involved in a running battle with the governors of the party since February, when they asked him to convene a meeting of the party’s National Executive Committee, which he has refused to do.
It is rumored that he fears a vote of no confidence would be engineered against him at the meeting.
Five northern governors, Nyako; Rabiu Kwankwaso, Kano; Aliyu Babangida, Niger; Aliyu Wamakko, Sokoto); and Sule Lamido, Jigawa, have been making wide consultations with past leaders, including ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo; and ex-dictator Ibrahim Babangida on how to restore peace to the PDP.
The governors were said to have impressed it upon those they consulted that removing Tukur was the only panacea for peace in the party.
Ex-Vice-President Abubakar Atiku’s aides had confirmed to journalists on Sunday that he had a meeting with PDP chairman in his Wuse 2 residence in Abuja late on Saturday.
Atiku had reportedly rushed down for the meeting with Tukur in his house at the behest of the PDP chairman.
Sources had told our correspondents that the meeting centred on how to save Tukur’s job.
The meeting between Tukur and Atiku reportedly lasted for one-and-a-half hours.
Tukur was said to have left the meeting for another one with the President at the Presidential Villa same Saturday night.
Atiku is also from Adamawa State and hails from the same Jada Local Government Area as Tukur.
Efforts to get Tukur’s spokesman, Mr. Olive Okpala, to respond to the story of his principal’s meeting with Atiku and Jonathan on Saturday, in view of the latest email from the PDP boss failed as Okapala neither picked his call nor responded to an SMS to his mobile phone on the matter.
The PDP boss home state governor, Nyako, had on Sunday warned Tukur to learn how to obey the party’s constitution.
“Our stand against Tukur has not been his personality; we are saying that the chairman must learn to respect the constitution of the party and the laws of the land and that there should be fairness, justice and equity in the way things are done.
“The problem is about the process that imposes the will of some people on the PDP. For people to bring some people who contested election under the platform of the Labour Party and impose them on the party as state leaders is unconstitutional,” Nyako said through his spokesman, Mr. Ahmad Sajo.