Governors elected on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in South-East geo-political zone have resolved to adopt cautious support for the party’s presidential standard bearer, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
A
source close to one of the three PDP governors confided in The Guardian
that even before the meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari as part of
the members of the National Economic Council (NEC), the governors
agreed to take a middle course in the forthcoming presidential election.
The
source said: “Part of the resolution of the governors is that they
should not make financial commitment to presidential campaign of
Atiku/Obi. They also agreed to ensure that there was no joint campaign
promotional, especially billboards in their respective states.”
The
source stated that the governors’ decision was informed by the need to
preserve their political future and avert any adverse response from the
ruling party in view of the electoral challenges they face in the hands
of candidates from All Progressives Congress (APC) and All Progressives
Grand Alliance (APGA) in the zone.
He added that some of
those who erected goodwill political campaign billboards featuring
Atiku/Obi, the governors and other PDP candidates had been told to
remove them while the message had gone round that pictures of the
governors and the presidential candidates should not be promoted on the
same materials.
However, when contacted about the development,
the Director-General of South-East Governors’ Forum, Prof. Uche
Ortuanya, denied that the governors were aligning towards a political
party to achieve zonal integration, stressing that the “political future
of the governors and economic integration of the zone are not mutually
exclusive.”
He said: “It is not true. It is a wrong perception
of what is going on because South-East people tend to look at the
Governors’ Forum from a distance and as such do not understand the inner
workings of the forum.
“Rather, the economic imperatives
require that they come together more than political imperatives.
Politics is only limited to the realms of elections and about individual
positions. The forum operates as a regional bloc in the realms of the
economy.
“Anybody can be in any party and politics is only
limited to parties. We have three PDP governors, one each from APC and
APGA. There is no justifiable premise for that imputation.” They can
still survive politically and the zone would grow.”
Source:- Theguardian
Share your thoughts