Plot to Remove Tukur As PDP Chair Thickens

The Presidency may have concluded plans to dump the Peoples Democratic Party national chairman Bamanga Tukur as some aides of President Goodluck Jonathan have commenced a search for a possible replacement.

The president has been under intense pressure in recent weeks to remove Tukur, who has had a running battle with governors elected on the PDP platform.

Sources said Jonathan may have caved in to the demand of some powerful party stakeholders, including the governors, to remove Tukur following reports that during the recent reconciliatory tour of the chairman of the party’s Board of Trustees, Chief Tony Anenih, virtually all the governors he met blamed the national chairman for the crisis in the party, drawing attention to the factional crisis in his home state of Adamawa.

According to a source, there is fear among the PDP governors that the factional crisis in Adamawa State is a plot by the Presidency to gradually take over the structures of the party in the states. The thinking among the PDP governors is that the Adamawa PDP crisis is being used as a test ground to launch attacks on other PDP state governors.

THISDAY gathered that this was the position of most PDP governors that the Anenih’s committee encountered and the panel had made this known to Jonathan.

The president was said to be unhappy with the way the reconciliatory tour embarked upon by the Tukur-led National Working Committee was handled, a situation that resulted in the boycott of the exercise by most of PDP governors.

Besides, despite the controversy generated by the Adamawa State PDP crisis, Tukur recently wrote a letter to the Independent National Electoral Commission to recognise the Joel Madaki faction of the party in the state as the authentic PDP state executive. Tukur and the acting national secretary, Onwe Solomon Onwe, were said to have written INEC without the consent of the NWC.

Tukur’s letter to INEC was irrespective of efforts by the president to resolve the Adamawa State PDP crisis through the setting up of a presidential committee led by Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State.

At the moment in the state, the situation looks dicey, as both the Madaki faction, backed by Tukur, and the Mijijnwa Kaugama faction, backed by Governor Murtala Nyako, have commenced sales of forms for the House of Assembly by-election slated for April 19.