ABUJA: Seven Nigerian ruling party governors and a former presidential candidate formed a splinter group opposed to President Goodluck Jonathan on Saturday, in the most explicit internal threat yet to his assumed bid to run for another term in office.
Nigeria’s ruling People’s Democratic Party has been in power since shortly after the end of military rule in 1998, but it is increasingly riven by internal squabbles, centred around Jonathan’s alleged intention to run again in 2015.
“We address you today as leaders of the PDP, who are worried by the increasing repression, restrictions of freedom of association, arbitrary suspension of members,” read the statement by seven governors and former vice president Atiku Abubakar.
“We consider it a sacred responsibility to save the PDP from the antics of a few desperadoes who ... are bent on hijacking the party for selfish ends,” it added. Many northerners say Jonathan’s running again would violate an unwritten rule within the PDP that power should rotate between the largely Muslim north and mostly Christian south every two terms.
But the president has also made powerful enemies elsewhere, including the governor of Rivers state Rotimi Amaechi, who is from Jonathan’s own oil producing Niger Delta region.
Reuters
