ANOTHER TWO LEAVE! Wamakko and Kwankwaso dump PDP, Jonathan stunned!

It was a shell shocked and stunned President Goodluck Jonathan who watched helplessly as Governors Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano State and Aliyu Wamakko of Sokoto State told him they had left the ruling party for good during last Sunday’s meeting, a source in the Presidency has told Trend Perch

The Governors informed the President that there was no going back on their defection to the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC).

President Jonathan had relied on Governor Babangida Aliyu of Niger State and NSA Sambo Dasuki to make the two Governors have a change of heart regarding their defection to the opposition. Dasuki and Babangida had succeeded in cajoling Wamakko and Kwankwaso to attend the PDP Governors’ meeting last Sunday. But the President was left befuddled when the two Governors told him that their defection to the APC was a fait accompli and there was going to be no change of hearts.

Kwankwaso was said to have listed the reasons why they left the PDP to the President and had also reiterated the need for party chairman, Bamanga Tukur to be handed his marching orders if the party was going to return to its glory days, our source revealed. The two defected Governors had left the meeting hours before it was billed to end as the other PDP Governors jaw-jawed into the early hours of Monday.

Wamakko had told State House correspondents as he exited the First Lady’s conference room (venue of the meeting):

“The meeting went on very well because some of us came here as governors of the APC and our position has been known. On behalf of the five of us, I have already briefed Mr. President that we are no longer in the PDP and that we are already in another party.

“But as a President of this country, if he calls us, we will come and listen to him and respect him as a leader of our country; otherwise, what we had there was mostly a PDP affair,” Wamakko said.

Their invitation to the PDP Governors’ meeting was a last ditch attempt by the President to infiltrate the ranks of the G5 after stopping the Governors of Niger and Jigawa States from joining the APC.

In a statement issued in Lagos yesterday, the APC said the President has to live with the fact that the G5 Governors had gone for good and backed the decision of the two Governors to honour the invitation as a sign of respect to the President.

“Being the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, there is no reason why any governor will not honour an invitation by the President,” the statement signed by the National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, read.

“There is therefore nothing extraordinary about the correct decision of the two Governors to meet with the President, even as we note that the decision by some PDP governors to attend the meeting is purely within their prerogative.”