Sambo relocates to Kaduna to avert defeat

VICE-President Namadi Sambo appeared to have relocated to his Kaduna home state as part of the moves by the ruling Peoples Democratic Party to strengthen its position in the elections. Sambo, in the past three days, had been holding series of meetings with stakeholders in the Kaduna PDP ahead of the National Assembly election rescheduled for Saturday. Our correspondent gathered that Sambo and the Kaduna State Governor, Mr. Paptrick Yakowa, as well as all the members of the state executive of the PDP had been meeting behind closed doors, brainstorming on how to resolve alleged bickering among party members, particularly at the local government level. A source at the Sir Kashim Ibrahim Government House, venue of the meetings, said that Sambo, Yakowa and the other PDP stakeholders had been expressing fears that the intra-party crisis might rob the PDP of victory in the state at the forthcoming polls if it was not immediately resolved. The PDP in the state is yet to put behind it the crisis that trailed its primary elections. The strife within the PDP in the state had got to a head with the emergence of various factions bent on working against the interest of one another at the polls. Also, in some of the local government areas, party officials, our correspondent gathered, had sidelined other stakeholders in the running of the party. Sambo had on Monday met at the Kaduna Government House with the PDP chairmen in the 23 local government areas where he impressed it upon them to forget their differences and close ranks and work for the victory of the party at the polls. At another meeting with all the stakeholders of the party at the Government House, tempers flared, resulting in the exchange of abusive words by some of the party chieftains in the full glare of both the vice president who presided over the meeting and Yakowa. This altercation, the source said, embarrassed both Sambo and Yakowa, especially with the nature of the complaints from feuding party members. “The main issue is that some people in the party want to eat their cakes and have it. Some of the PDP candidates for the State House of Assembly are teaming up with opposition candidates in the National Assembly elections, because of personal grudges they have against some candidates of the PDP vying for the National Assembly,” a source close to the meeting said. By Segun Olatunji Courtesy Of: Punch