By Jide AJANI, Deputy Editor
Consequent upon the arrangement that consensus candidate of the Northern Political Leaders’ Forum, NPLF, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar would pick his running mate from the South East geo-political zone, there is intense jostling for who would pick the ticket.

Also, there are confusing signals from the South East Caucus of the National Assembly regarding the arrangement.

This is because some interests are pushing for the candidacy of Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu.
But information made available to Sunday Vanguard suggests that Ekweremadu appears to be the arrow head of the mobilization for President Goodluck Jonathan, according to a source very close to the deputy Senate president.

But those insisting on the choice of Ekweramadu hinted, “He has age on his side.  He has been a local government chairman.  He has been the secretary to the government of Enugu State, senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for almost eight years and has been the deputy Senate president for almost half of the same duration”.

He is not alone.
There are also indications that there is a tango between the caucuses represented by the South-East Political Leaders Form, SEPLF, led by second republic vice president, Dr.  Alex Ekwueme — with Chief Jim Nwobodo and Chief China Nwanyanwu, secretary of the Forum, as members — and another ostensibly angling for the protection of the interests of former military president, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, with former Senate president, Senator Ken Nnamani, and former health minister, Prof ABC Nwosu, as pivots.

Whereas the Ekweme group is insisting that it was instrumental in negotiating an arrangement which would see the South East Zone producing a running mate to the candidate of the NPLF, with the possibility of the person taking over in 2015 as president, the Nnamani group is insisting in what a source described as “the arrangement to have an inclusive team after a consensus choice has been presented from amongst the four presidential contenders of the NPLF (Atiku, Babangida, former National Security Adviser, NSA, General Aliyu Mohammed Gusau (rtd) and Kwara State governor, Bukola Saraki).

Jonathan team hits Atiku
Yet, there is a growing mobilization against the choice of Atiku as consensus candidate of the NPLF.

A source in the Jonathan/Sambo Presidential Campaign Orgnaisation told Sunday Vanguard, yesterday that “daylight would soon enter that arrangement which suggests that some people in the North have arrogated to themselves the power to lord an individual over others.

The idea will not work because if it is true that just four people who are said to be wise ended up with Atiku as consensus candidate, then where is the democracy in that?  Is that democracy in any form”?

But the secretary of the consensus committee, Bello Sabo Abdulkadir, had said in a statement earlier last week: “the consensus process was not an initiative of any political party but of the aspirants themselves who were desirous of reducing their numbers from four to one in order to pool their political resources together as strategy to win the primary election of their party, the Peoples Democratic Party.

The PDP was not part of the process because the constitution of the Party has bared it and its officials from taking sides in a contest for elective posts between its members. The participation of the party would have prejudiced the interests of other contending members some of whom are probably yet to emerge”.