How Darius edged out Umar in Taraba contest

Umar’s biggest misfortune was the Supreme Court’s ruling last month that removed him from office and restored former Deputy Governor Abubakar Danladi to his post. Prior to that, Umar was in control of both the PDP in the state and the delegates elected to pick its governorship candidate. Even after losing his acting governor seat, […]

Umar’s biggest misfortune was the Supreme Court’s ruling last month that removed him from office and restored former Deputy Governor Abubakar Danladi to his post. Prior to that, Umar was in control of both the PDP in the state and the delegates elected to pick its governorship candidate. Even after losing his acting governor seat, he retains control of most of the delegates. But Darius Ishaku, backed by General Danjuma, had other plans. They allegedly used their connections in the presidency and at the national secretariat of the party and caused the primary election to be shifted to Abuja, instead of Jalingo, where it is legally supposed to be held.
Apparently, thinking that his control of the delegates would still secure him victory wherever the election is held, Umar reportedly agreed to the shift (though some of his supporters denied this) and transported them (his sympathetic delegates) to Abuja for the primaries. Unknown to him, his opponents and the PDP national secretariat had other ideas. On the fixed day of the primaries, December 11, the delegates were denied entry into the national secretariat and journalists were asked to leave the venue.
The national leadership of the party later announced that the primaries have been held and that Darius Ishaku has emerged as the winner for the governorship ticket while Garba Umar has won the ticket for Taraba Northern Senatorial District. It is still unclear how Umar’s governorship nomination form metamorphosed into a senatorial nomination form, but the PDP national leaders insisted that that was what the Abuja primaries have produced.
Aspirants for various posts who lost out in the Abuja arrangements are now accusing the PDP leaders of failing to provide a levelled playing field for all stakeholders in the exercise.
One of the major controversies surrounding the primaries was the exclusion of the elected delegates from voting while ‘special delegates’ were used allegedly to favour Ishaku Darius camp. Some of the aggrieved aspirants have threatened to take legal action if nothing is done to correct anomalies in the exercise.
Other aspirants who felt their political ambitions are being jeopardised by the development are said to be making frantic moves to cross over to other parties to actualise their aspirations. There are reports that some of the aggrieved aspirants have vowed to join other parties and work against the PDP, if their grievances are not addressed.
The state chairman of the party Victor Bala Kona said the primaries were shifted to Abuja due to unresolved internal electoral procedure. But political pundits said the conduct of the primaries in Abuja was calculated to scheme out other aspirants, especially the former acting governor and his associates, so as to give room for the preferred candidates of General Danjuma.
Umar was initially said to be upbeat of clinching the party’s ticket, having garnered a large percentage of the delegates to his side during the ward congresses, conducted across the 168 wards of the state amid complaints of irregularities.
Long before the primaries, General Danjuma had reportedly endorsed Darius Ishaku as the consensus candidate from the Southern Zone, which has not produced a governor of the state since the return of civilian rule in 1999. It was that quest that eventually saw Darius emerging as the PDP candidate.
But Umar and another key governorship aspirant, Chief David Sabo Kente, as well as aspirants for other seats in their camps, who lost out in the primaries, are calling for fresh primaries in the state. Kente, in a recent interview, described the exercise as “far from being free and fair.”
He said the sudden change of venue of the election from Jalingo to Abuja, less than 24 hours to its conduct, without the knowledge of the contestants, was a calculated ploy by the organisers to disenfranchise the 504 ad-hoc delegates in the state. He queried the rationale behind moving the primaries to Abuja when Taraba was not under an emergency rule. “The question to ask is: why have they decided to move the election to Abuja while there is no state of emergency in Taraba?” He said only 217 members, representing 30 per cent of the 721 delegates, voted in the Abuja primaries.
Asked if he would seek redress in the court of law, he said: “For me, I have a different opinion, writing to the same organisation that conducted those primaries. There will be no need to complain to them because you are complaining to somebody that has done something that is wrong. We are consulting and talking to a lot of people. We have spoken to the top hierarchy of the party on our dissatisfaction because this is an election that was supposed to be held in Taraba.”
The former Acting Governor’s camp has equally faulted the manner the primaries were conducted. In a statement by its Director General Ahmed Yusuf, the Umar Campaign Organisation described ‘the allocation’ of various PDP election tickets under the watch of some members of the National Working Committee as unlawful and not reflective of the wishes of the people.
He said the organisers of the Abuja primaries locked out the legally elected delegates and some constitutionally recognised special delegates from the primaries and inappropriately produced a list of “winners” that are completely strange to PDP members in Taraba State.
“Some of the so-called ‘winners’ had neither bought nomination forms nor (had they been) screened for the various elective positions allocated to them,” Yusuf alleged. He said PDP, as the leading party in Nigeria, has a well-articulated and written constitution and guidelines for nomination of candidates for elections into the various elective positions in the country.
The campaign group vows to reject any candidate produced outside the nationally prescribed guidelines for elections. It called on the party’s National Executive Council and National Working Committee to re-order the primaries in Taraba State to allow the duly elected delegates to participate in the exercise.  
“The good people of Taraba State should be accorded their own respect and right of nominating their own candidates on home soil. Anything short of this is completely unacceptable,” Yusuf added.
But Ishaku Darius’s campaign team said the grievances being expressed by the aspirants were baseless as they had all consented to the holding of the primaries in Abuja. The Youth Director for Ishaku Campaign Organisation Comrade Stephen Agya said the primaries were properly conducted and its organisation is satisfied with the outcome.
“I see no reason for their complaints because they all consented when the venue was moved to Abuja. They were both in Abuja with their supporters, so for them to have moved to Abuja means that they consented with the arrangement,” he argued.
He said the ideal thing any committed aggrieved party member ought to do is to explore all redress channels available in the party and not to defect or to consider the option of going to court. On whether the development could pose danger to PDP in 2015, Agya said the party is not worried by the opposition as it is confident of victory come 2015.
Meanwhile, Umar’s political associates are also aggrieved over reports that he (Umar) is now considering the option of accepting Taraba North Senatorial ticket being offered to him as a way of compensation for the lost governorship ticket. According to them, it would amount to betrayal of trust on the part of Umar to accept such offer when all his supporters had completely lost out in the primaries.
But Umar is said to be in a tight corner on whether to accept the offer or not because, according to some sources, he had reportedly been told to do so or risk probe.
It was learnt that former Governor Jolly Nyame who had earlier picked a PDP form to contest for the Taraba North Senatorial seat had to sacrifice his ambition for Umar at the behest of Darius camp. This development has also generated grievances from Nyame’s political associates and kinsmen, who felt they were totally left out of the political scheme. There were reports that Nyame might leave PDP to join the Social Democratic Party to pursue his senatorial ambition. But one of his aides said Nyame still remains a member of the PDP and will not consider leaving the party over this issue. According to him, Nyame would sacrifice his ambition in the interest of peace and harmony in the state.
How to ensure harmony in the party itself appears to be a huge task. Political pundits believe that with the crisis in the party, leading to defections of some of its members in the state, the PDP may not have an easy ride in the 2015 general elections.