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Tension in Bayelsa as Jonathan drags Dickson to Obasanjo to impose this guber candidate
Party members of the ruling PDP in Bayelsa are kicking as former President Goodluck Jonathan surrenders the party decision-making in respect of the November guber election to former President Olusegun Obasanjo in Ogun.
The deadlock of the major decision about who emerges the PDP flagbearer was said to have been taken to Otta Farm, the power base of Obasanjo, for intervention.
Obasanjo has lost grip of his own state, and his own political clout, for about eight years now. His candidate Atiku Abubakar lost to the APC’s Muhammadu Buhari in the Feb 23 presidential election—even in Obasanjo’s ward.
His new role as indirect kingmaker might not be unconnected to the godlike respect Jonathan gives him as a godfather.
However, the National Daily gathered the Otta farmer refused to meddle in Bayelsa affair.
But a former security adviser to the Bayelsa State Government, Perekeme Kpodoh, said the Jonathan move, no matter what, is ‘unacceptable’.
Other politicians in the state are also angry that Gov. Seriake Dickson and Jonathan had to meet with Obasanjo to resolve the matter.
Both have been fighting a cold war on who succeeds the governor.
While Jonathan is working hard to impose Timi Alaibe, a former boss of the NDDC, among a line up of six favourites, Dickson wants some insider from his own government.
Kpodoh agreed consultations are an internal affair of the party, and it is allowed in democracy, but he insisted the meeting and endorsement of a particular candidate for governorship of the state from the Otta farm in Ogun will not be acceptable to Bayelsans.
According to him, past endorsements by the former presidents have failed the people of the state.
“Politicians cannot give us a governorship candidate without the knowledge of what Bayelsa people are feeling,” he said on Saturday at a briefing in Bayelsa.
“If the PDP think they have a godfather somewhere, they should know that the APC also have a godfather in the present president, Muhammadu Buhari. It is high time the government changed from PDP to APC in the state.”