He has been in the news since the crisis rocking the ruling People’s Democratic Party started on August 31, 2013 when some members of the party, including seven governors, stormed out of the party’s mini convention at the Eagle Square, Abuja in protest. They went ahead to form what was then called the new PDP which a court later declared illegal. But the pronouncement of the courts was not enough to give Bamanga Tukur, the National Chairman of the PDP any respite. He has been in the news perpetually. Has it been for the wrong reasons? Not really. Perhaps, for uncomfortable reasons.
Last week, words came from the grapevine that he might be sacrificed by President Goodluck Jonathan to pacify the hawks within the party who have been working for Tukur’s political blood. Some say he might be removed at the next NEC meeting of the party. But the man himself has come out to say that the National Executive Committee meeting of the party that he called for January 6 and 8 had nothing to do with his removal. He said: “I summoned the National Caucus and the NEC meetings and I can assure you that the agenda of these meetings has no leadership change. My resignation or ouster by the NEC is by no means part of the agenda of the meetings.”
Good explanation. But surely the former governor of the old Gongola State surely knows that those who want him out have not relented. They are perfecting their moves everyday and they seem hell bent on seeing to it that he joins the growing club of former national chairmen of the PDP.
Those who want him out, to which the five governors who have since decamped to the APC belong to, had accused Tukur of high-handedness and running the affairs of the party as if it was his family estate. They pointed to the crisis in the Adamawa State chapter of the party where the governor, Murtala Nyako, had been stripped of the control of the party by Tukur and which has caused major division within the party in that state. Part of the conditions the G7 (as the rebel governors were then addressed) gave for peace was that the control of the party’s structure in Adamawa State be given to Nyako. Above all, they asked President Jonathan, who happens to be a major backer of Tukur, to see to it that the man was removed as the national chairman of the party.While these were the issues on the surface, the current moves to ease Tukur out of office as the national chairman of the PDP are seen as another onslaught on the rumoured second term ambition of President Jonathan. It is seen by political watchers that Tukur is fiercely loyal to the president and could not be trusted to conduct any presidential convention where the president would face any credible opposition. In other words, those who don’t want the president to run see taking control of the party off him as the only way this could be achieved. They are also aware that there is no way they could do this if Tukur still remains the national chair of the party.
In the final analysis, if Tukur is shown the exit door as the national chairman of the PDP, it would have had less to do with his leadership style as his detractors would want the world to believe.
Tukur would have paid the price for loyalty; he would have been sacrificed as part of a high-wire political deal between a president bent on exercising his constitutional rights of seeking second term in office and those who want a fair deal from the horsetrading.
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