Ahead of Saturday’s Special National Convention of the Peoples Democratic Party, a crisis has hit the Kaduna State chapter of the main opposition party as the camps of the former governor, Senator Ahmed Makarfi and that of ex-Vice President Namadi Sambo are now at loggerheads over the position of National Chairman.
Our correspondent gathered that the disagreement between both Kaduna PDP chieftains followed the failure of Makarfi to emerge as the North’s consensus candidate for the position of the party’s national chairmanship.
Makarfi, who had earlier failed to emerge as the consensus candidate of the North-West, having scored only one vote during a shadow election in which former Katsina State governor, Shehu Shema, had emerged the winner and consensus candidate for the North-West, it was learnt, had placed the blame for his loss on the doorsteps of the former Vice President Sambo and his supporters.
Our correspondent gathered that this alleged blame game and brick bats now being thrown by Makarfi at the former vice president and his camp angered some of Sambo’s supporters, who are now at daggers drawn with the former senator.
A Facebook posting on Tuesday by a former spokesman to the former Vice President, Umar Sani, confirmed speculations that there may no longer be any love lost between Makarfi and Sambo, who was also his successor as Kaduna State governor.
The Facebook posting on the matter by Sambo’s spokesman, Sani titled “Hoopla Kookie,” read, “A Kaduna based journalist called me yesterday to make inquiries as to whether I instituted an action in court aimed at halting the planned National Convention of the people’s Democratic Party (PDP) scheduled for Saturday the 30th and Sunday the 31st of October 2021. I immediately burst into laughter and asked him why he thinks it is me that instituted such an action, he said it is the trending rumour in town. I asked him whether he had read my article on the Kaduna State Judiciary and he answered in the affirmative. I proceeded to tell him that I can never institute an action in a judiciary I had no confidence in.
“I told him I do not have any iota of idea as to whom or why such action will be instituted since the Appeal Court is due to give its verdict the preceding day. What will an action in a Kaduna High Court generate that the judgement of an Appeal Court will not? I dismissed the rumour with a wave of the hand and continued my day’s business. Not long after, I received another call from the Punch correspondent in Abuja asking me the same question. I requested him to instruct his Kaduna correspondent to proceed to the Kaduna High Court and request for the filed court documents and examine them to ascertain and verify whether I am a party to the suit. He expressed reservations that the courts will have been closed by then, but I encouraged him to try his luck, perhaps he might be lucky.
“My instinct and intuition thereafter prompted me to investigate the source of the “rumor,“ Lo and behold, it came from an expected source.
“In the build up to the Saturday National Convention certain key positions were zoned to the North West and a one-time Governor, Senator and Acting National Chairman vied for a position where he suffered a humiliating defeat. Smarting from such a monumental loss, the blame game was activated and it was like a circus. The Chairman of the North-West caucus of the PDP, Tanimu Turaki SAN received the first salvo, Former Jigawa State Governor was next and the former Vice President followed suit in that order.
“Angry that he lost woefully in the run down to consensus arrangements, he was looking for a scape goat to lay bare and skin alive. It was therefore convenient to blame me and the former VP for what we both know nothing about. I can understand the frustration but I cannot fathom why it could lead to formulations, fabrications, exaggerations, half-truth and in some cases outright lies against key officers of the Party just so as to score cheap political points and get back at some innocent souls.
“Anybody familiar with his brand of politics will agree with me that such an action is not unusual. We are therefore used to such behaviour, what we fail to decipher is the raison detre of such sensational fabrications.
“Not long ago, the same person prevaricated that the Youth leader position was given to him as compensation for his defeat at the selection process. Further inquiries from the relevant authorities on the veracity of the claim turned out to be a hoax.
“It is disheartening for someone to manipulate things in such a manner as to show his wanton greed and avarice. A state cannot be structured in a manner as to allow an individual to be a monopoly. Notwithstanding the gift of life and prosperity, the undeniable desire to truncate the progress of others with blackmail, cheap gossips and innuendos is a heresy.
“I wish to categorically state that Prince Uche Secondus is my friend, notwithstanding his action in supporting the fingers that are already biting him, I stand firm in the belief that he was witch hunted and deserves more from a party he laboured to bring to fruition and prosperity. I stand Kampe with my friends.”