Date Published: 01/12/10

Yar’Adua’s AWOL splits PDP

…Members doubt President’s BBC “Interview”

…Unsettled by Donald Duke’s grating comments on ailing President

Vincent Ogbulafor, PDP National Chairman

As President Umar Musa Yar’Adua’s AWOL enters its 53 rd day, it has emerged that a sharp division has developed in the ranks of the leadership of his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) over the position to take on the resolve of some hawks in the Yar’Adua administration to maintain sealed lips on the health status of the ailing president.

This comes amidst indications that the party leadership is staving off pressure to sanction a former governor of Cross River State, Mr. Donald Duke over an interview published by a local newspaper over the weekend, where the former governor made very grating comments on Yar’Adua for using his AWOL to set “a dangerous precedent” .

Some PDP national officers who spoke to Pointblanknews.com disclosed that they have been under considerable pressure not to go public to decry what they said were the “several unconstitutional acts” committed by Yar’Adua under the cover of being sick.

“We are so ashamed of ourselves, for not even during the darkest days of the Abacha era were Nigerians taken for the kind of ride we are at the moment being collective taken by Mr. President and a few of his aides whom prior to 2007 didn’t know anywhere beyond Katsina and Kaduna,” a PDP national officer told Pointblanknews.

“Our national chairman once boasted that PDP would dominate Nigeria for the next 60 years. As things stand, and from the way these Katsina people are going, there is a great fear that we may not even last six more months, and that is why some of us have opted to keep away from Abuja for the time being,” he stated.

Another officer disclosed how the party’s National Working Committee had been compelled by public outcry to raise questions about the true state of Yar’Adua’s health and the need to “carry Nigerians along instead of feeding them with a fast dwindling diet of lies” which the officer said had run out of stock.

“We have on a number of occasions demanded from our national chairman if he succeeded in speaking with Mr. President. He would always respond with tales of how he called and was told Mr. President had just dozed off, or had gone to have his bath, or was with the doctor. For God’s sake, how can a party’s national chairman be unable to speak with a President produced by his party for over 50 days and you want us to claim all is well? Nothing, of course, can be more dishonest,” a national officer from the north told Pointblanknews.com.

Another prominent member of the Working Committee told Pointblanknews.com how many of them still nursed fears that the person who purported to be Yar’Adua in the less-than-a-minute interview yesterday with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) could not have been the recuperating President.

“We were amused at the text messages bombarding our phones that Mr. President would speak to BBC. When we asked if it would be BBC Hardtalk, they said “no, BBC radio. And you know some of us have been in this business for some time. A president who has not said “sorry” to President Obama since last Christmas that Mutallab boy tried to blow up an aircraft; the same man who forgot to wish us a happy new year, suddenly is speaking to BBC without video? Oh, that was pretty cheap,” he mused.

The officer told Pointblanknews.com how some colleagues had unsuccessfully attempted to dub Duke’s interview “anti-party” but had been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support for the former governor’s “courage to speak the truth” by majority of his colleagues.

“How can a party that professes to be democratic seek to abridge people’s right to expression, especially when such expressions reflect the reality on ground? Duke is a good party man not given to frivolities. He hit the nail on the head in the interview. Let us call a spade a spade. Mr. President has been wrong on so many things since he was flown out. These are the things the former governor pointed out so there is no way that can equate to anti-party,” fumed the party officer.

Duke had in the incisive interview lashed out on Yar’Adua for failing to hand over to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan prior to jetting out for medical treatment, for failing to swear in the Chief Justice of the Federation, and for not revealing the true state of his health, saying Yar’Adua was laying the foundation for a “bad precedence.” He faulted claims that Jonathan was incapacitated y Yar’Adua’s refusal to formally inform the National Assembly that he was travelling for medical reasons.

“Vice President Goodluck Jonathan’s position confuses me because his duty is to stand in the gap when the President is unavailable but he says he is waiting for a letter. What if something happens and the President loses consciousness and cannot read nor write? This letter business is a courtesy and formality to the National Assembly…The issue of stepping-in does not arise because as vice president, he is already in,” Duke declared.