Northern Leaders Move Against Jonathan, Ciroma Rapport

Posted by admin Latest Politics Friday, March 4th, 2011

Some leaders of the North who are bent on actualising a northern presidency have perfected plans to derail to peace moves between President Goodluck Jonathan and leaders of the consensus presidential candidate in the party led by Mallam Adamu Ciroma.

President Jonathan two weeks ago visited Ciroma in his Abuja home, thus initiating a peace move towards the leaders of the Northern Political Leaders Forum (NPLF), which fought a battle to stop him from picking the presidential ticket in January.

Following Jonathan’s visit to Ciroma, a seven-member committee was set up to facilitate the formal entry of loyalists of the Consensus presidential candidate, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, and the NPLF into the Jonathan campaign.

Sources however said that while meetings have been held at the front of the seven member committee.

, with the decisions reached already before the President, some northern leaders under the aegis of Unity Forum (UF) Mallam Mustapha Salihu, Chairman of the Unity Forum (UF) led by Alhaji M.M Abdul, had met to Finetune plans by which the peace move would be derailed.

It was gathered that the forum, which is already recruiting the Arewa Consultative Forum(ACF) and the NPLF is bent on ensuring that the North works for the presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), General Muhammadu Buhari.

Though the CPC leader is yet to meet with Atiku and Geberal Ibrahim Babangida, it was learnt that leaders of the UF were pressurizing the director General of the Buhari Campoaign, Dr. Sule Hamman to facilitate the meeting.

Sources said that at a recent meeting held be UF and leaders of the ACF, it was decided that Buhari, Atiku and Babangida be brought into the plot to ensure that the peace deal between Ciroma and Jonathan does not materialize.

A source close to the groups said that one of the decision at the meeting was the need to impress it on Atiku and Babangida to continue to delay the planned meeting and peace deal between them and Jonathan till the critical time in the election, when they would announce their decision to back Buhari.

“The deal is to ensure that Atiku continue to delay his peace meetings and the deal with Jonathan so that it would be too late to actualize,” a source said of the decision by the UF and proponents of Northern presidency.

A meeting between Ciroma and President Jonathan two weeks ago was expected to yield a resolution leading to the fusion of the NPLF with the Presidential campaign of the PDP.

While the seven man committee set up by the president and Ciroma have met and taken some decisions, the final outcome have not materialized.But a source in the know said that the President was keeping a close tabl on Ciroma and all the pro-zoning leaders and that nothing would derail the peace deal.

-Tribunewp_posts