*Says merger plans by opposition parties, not a threat

BY HENRY UMORU

ABUJA – National Chairman of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, yesterday said there were no plans to victimize any governor elected on the platform of the party.

He also admitted that the governors were his people, stressing that as a father to all, he had put behind him the action of 10 members of the National Working Committee, NWC, who reversed the party’s earlier decision on Adamawa State PDP.

Tukur said: “I am a father! Once you are looking forward, you don’t look back again. We are one. We all can make mistakes”. He noted that all the governors were his field commanders in the states, implementing the manifesto and agenda of the party.

On governors insisting that there must be National Executive Meeting, NEC, before they could soft-pedal, Tukur said his job was to follow the party’s constitution to the letter.

He said: “Sure, the NEC will be convened. My job is to ensure that we do what the party constitution says. So, there is no fear and I also told you that the party is supreme. The party is above everybody, from the President down to the councillor, they are all under that umbrella. PDP is an institution and above governors, above president, above chairman of the party itself.”

Tukur, who also boasted that the PDP was not in any way threatened by the planned merger of Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN; All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP and other opposition political parties ahead of 2015 Presidential election, said the merger would not distract the PDP.

He said: “I will continue to tell people because we have to be fair and just and fulfil what we promised and people will follow us because we mean what we say and we deliver what we promised, and we agree to do what our people want us to do.”

On when the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, BoT will emerge, Tukur said the issue bother everybody in the party and not just the executive.

He said: “It is an advisory body. It is supposed to be a collection of people who are custodians of the conscience of the party, advising the party on how to get it right when the party is going wrong. So, it is going to come.”