THE leadership of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is currently divided over the health of President Umaru Yar’Adua. President Yar’Adua left the country in November for medical attention at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Sources in Abuja told Saturday Tribune, on Friday, that leaders of the party are sharply divided on whether or not the president would still be able to run the affairs of the country when he returns to the country, because of his health situation.
The leaders were also said to have been angered by an interview granted by former Cross River State governor, Mr. Donald Duke, to a newspaper where he described Yar’Adua’s absence as a “dangerous precedent.”
This, it was gathered, caused a division among leaders of the party, as some of them wanted Duke queried for making such comments, moreso as he is a leader of the party.
Some PDP national officers who spoke with Saturday Tribune disclosed that they had been under considerable pressure not to go public to decry what they said were several unconstitutional acts committed by Yar’Adua under the cover of being sick.
Another officer disclosed how the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) 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 the president. He would always respond with tales of how he called and was told the 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 said.
One of the party leaders spoke of 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.
“The 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,” said the party officer.
Meanwhile, the Board of Trustees (BOT) of the PDP, which met in Abuja on Thursday, agreed to the activation of all relevant sections of the 1999 Constitution to ensure that Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan assumes office as acting president.
Sources close to the meeting held at the Presidential Villa said that the PDP elders agreed after a prolonged debate which saw arguments for and against that the executive arm of government should appropriately inform the National Assembly of the vacation embarked upon by President Yar’Adua in Saudi Arabia through the activation of Section 145 of the constition
There was drama at the venue as a member of the BOT and the strongman of Anambra politics, Chief Andy Uba, was asked to leave.
