Aso Rock panics: Over tribunal’s outcome - Ex-govs under close watch

Idowu Samuel, Abuja - 03.02.2008

PRESIDENT Umaru Yar’Adua and Vice President Goodluck Jonathan may have quietly flagged off a re-election campaign, following the recent wave of fear that pervades the Presidential Villa, Aso Rock.

The Sunday Tribune was told that the President has yielded to pressure from some quarters that he should contest the election afresh if the election tribunal nullifies his election of April 21, 2007.

Besides, the President was said to have agreed with certain forces who assured him that raising money for the election would not be a difficult task despite the low profile spendings Yar’Adua has instituted since coming to office.

Last week, most of Abuja was adorned with Yar’Adua/Jonathan posters to signal the flagging off of the campaign. The posters, which surfaced on the streets a few days before the National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) last week, were renewed and pasted in strategic places within Abuja on Friday and Saturday.

“The President has resolved to re-contest the election if the election Tribunal voids his election of last year and we are not taking anything for granted,” one of the arrowheads of the new campaign told the Sunday Tribune in Abuja.

When confronted with the people’s impression of Yar’Adua as a slow President who has not made any appreciable impact in the last eight months, the source said that the issue will be addressed in the series of discussions ahead of the election, if the Supreme Court also upholds any negative ruling of the Court of Appeal.

We don’t see him as a slow performer, we believe there is virtue in being meticulous and Nigerians will get to see the benefits in that,” the source said.

It was also gathered that one of the positive sides of Yar’Adua is his refusal to spend a kobo of the security vote from May 29, 2007 to December.

The National Assembly discovered recently that the President has not touched a kobo of the security vote, while assessing the performance of the State House budget in 2007.

The decision was said to have saved the nation up to N1 billion. The decision of the President to seek re-election if the need arises was said to have informed a close watch placed on former governors by the security outfits in recent times.

Sources said that the former governors, who have been holding different meetings since they left power in May 2007, were seeking ways of dictating the pace in the PDP and the polity.

Former governor of Bayelsa State, DSP Alamieyeseigha, who visited former Delta State governor at the Kaduna prisons recently, voiced the discontent of the former state helmsmen when he said that the former leaders were worried that they were being targeted for prosecution, while those who serve at the Federal level were left untouched even when there are allegations against them.

The former governors are said to be plotting an inroad into the leadership of the PDP in the next convention, having lost the bid to impose one of their own, Senator George Akume, as the President of the Senate in June 2007.