Tukur: Why he fell
Bookmakers’ predictions that Alhaji Bamanga Tukur would fall through a consensus vote of no confidence at the Board of Trustees meeting of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday, did not exactly materialise. But he did cave in to pressure eventually.
Tukur’s fall, by the time it came, did not deviate from past patterns as he fell in the manner of most past PDP chairmen.
The attempt to put up resistance, rallying round staunch supporters, intense lobby and horse trading that characterised such processes in the past were all there.
His attempt to put up resistance worked initially. His joker of parrying the aggression to make it look like the President was the target, worked for some time, but at the end, he could not sustain it as the forces of opposition against him was said to have been so overwhelming that the President who had initially been giving him covering fire, had to cave in at the last minute.
What gave Tukur away, it has now become clear, was the unanimity of party stakeholders that he should go.
Sources say most of the PDP governors, members of the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party, members of the Board of Trustees (BOT) of the party and that of the national caucus all were in agreement that it would be better to have a new national chairman than for Tukur to continue.
The point said to have finally convinced the President, was the fact that Tukur seemed to be standing alone, a point which those against him held as proof that even if he was allowed to continue, the extent of the acrimony between him and the other NWC members will not allow them work.
The president was said to have on the strength of that fact, saw the implication, and asked Tukur to resign.
Since Tuesday when the party leaders reached that conclusion, Tukur had lost steam, calling off several meetings he had scheduled to lobby party stakeholders to his side.
Though Tukur fell, he earned the respect of non-PDP members for the way he had handled the party since he assumed office as national chairman in 2012. He had sought to bring back discipline to the party while enhancing the supremacy of the party in guiding the affairs of its members, especially those holding public office.
He had looked back at his NPN days, when there was no provision for the position of a party leader, as the President and governors returned on the party’s tickets submitted to the authority of the party and sought to reenact same.
The original vision of Tukur was to drive the policy with his own trusted staff as he came into office with a large retinue of cronies and associates which did not go down well with the other members of the NWC.
But it was Tukur’s resolve to helm in the governors to make them accept the supremacy of the party that tilled the soil for the planting of the seed of discord that would eventually consume him.
PDP state governors since the Obasanjo era have had their ways as they became major financiers of the party. They decide what goes on not only in their states but at the national level.
The first sign of trouble for Tukur came with the issue in his home state where Governor Murtala Nyako had put an executive committee that was loyal to him in place. Tukur, siding with the other stakeholders in the state, dissolved the Nyako exco and called for a fresh congress. The bid by other governors to save Nyako from embarrassment was rebuffed by Tukur and he succeeded in putting in place a new set of exco even after a presidential committee was put in place which gave a report that favoured Nyako.
The alliance of the governors to save Nyako soon turned into a movement that snowballed into a demand for the removal of Tukur. Soon also complaints of how he was running the party as a one-man show began to filter in.
His insistence that his friend, Alhaji Umrau Dikko, should head the disciplinary committee of the party, even when by precedence, the deputy national chairman of the party had been the one undertaking such task did not go down well with the NWC members.
But it was when he dissolved the Sokoto and Kwara excos without consulting the NWC that they decided to move against him. Some of the governors who were miffed that Tukur was ready to offer automatic seats to sitting senators reached out to the NWC members.
It was that lack of support from even his primary constituency that convinced the President that it would be better to bow to the wishes of the party members than continue to insist on Tukur.
Though Tukur has received many shots in the course of his stay as PDP chairman, the one that fell him was definitely the bullet fired from the guns of PDP governors.