GEJ, JANG, TUKUR SHAMED! #Why pro-Amaechi Govs Shunned Meeting With Jonathan# Fresh facts emerged on Tuesday that the 19 Governors who voted for Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, as Chairman of the NGF, shunned the Monday meeting called by President Jonathan to protest what they described as “undemocratic tendencies exhibited by the President.” The President had called a crisis meeting in Aso Rock over the stalemate arising from the sharing of last month’s national revenue. The 19 Governors said they decided to boycott the meeting to show their displeasure over the action of the President in recognising a defeated candidate as chairman of the NGF. It was reliably gathered that all the Governors who boycotted the meeting were in Abuja on Monday. Sources said the Amaechi supporters, who are in the majority, knew that it would be difficult for a meaningful decision to be taken without their attendance. At a meeting held at the Sokoto State Governor’s Lodge, the pro-Amaechi Governors were said to have had a long strategic session, where they discussed the crisis rocking the group, the threat of suspension from the ruling PDP dangling on the neck of some of their colleagues and the increasingly combative posture of the President and his advisers. “The idea was to go from the Sokoto Governor’s Lodge to Aso Rock for the meeting with the President but we later decided to boycott the meeting to show the President that he was being misled. We were all in Abuja,” one of the Governors, revealed Knowing full well that they were having the upper hand in a deepening crisis between them and the Presidency, some of the Governors adopted the position that a boycott would send a strong signal to the Presidency that “they would not allow a bad precedence to be set in the country.” The Governor added: “First, the President sponsored a candidate in an election he does not have any stake. As if that is not bad enough, when his candidate failed, he went ahead to recognise him and he is working very hard to split the NGF. “We felt that was unbecoming of a President who claims to have the people’s mandate. Through the boycott, we wanted to show the President that he is being misled. “Jonathan should be worried that he has only 16 Governors behind him in a country of 36 Governors. He is the President of the country and therefore should be able to have all the 36 Governors behind him. “If the fact that he has only 16 Governors does not worry him, that is his business, but any perspective person in his position should be worried,” he said. Even so, it was gathered that the 19 pro-Amaechi Governors may have been emboldened to go ahead with the boycott given the new realisation that it would be difficult for the PDP to do without some of them. “Of course, the lifting of the suspension on Governor Aliyu Wamakko (by PDP) shows that the party is becoming vulnerable and cannot afford to make more enemies,” the source added. By YSO
Posted on: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 07:19:30 +0000
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