OPPOSITION MEETS TO EDGE OUT JANG, PDP CHAIRMAN

By NBF News

Series of meetings are now going on in the opposition camp in the Peoples Democratic Party in Plateau State to ensure that Governor of Plateau State, Jonah Jang, and Chairman of the party, Dakum Shown, do not remain relevant beyond 2011.

Despite the court ruling in May, restraining the Caretaker Committee of the party headed by Chief King Shuluwa from operating in the state, the national headquarter of the party, at its last NEC meeting gave the committee three months to hold election at ward and local government levels as well as conclude the state congress.

Daily Sun gathered that the Dakum Shown faction, having seen the handwriting on the wall that abiding by the court order only amounted to anti-party activity, had decided to go for the congresses. It is expected to make announcement to this effect as soon as the governor returns to the state this week from his medical trip abroad.

However, the Emmanuel Mangni-led group, which had been giving the Caretaker Committee the necessary backing to enable it carry out its assignment in the state was not comfortable with this development. It has, therefore, been holding series of meetings to capture delegates at the ward, local government and state levels to make it impossible for the governor's goup to make any impact.

A member of the group described one of such meetings as very successful as members were all in agreement that the present leadership under Dakum Shown must be dismantled and they had begun to shop for candidates for the elective post, including the person to fill the governorship seat.

However, information from the governor's camp also indicated that the members were not lying low either but trying all possible means to reconcile with the aggrieved members to ensure that the governor did not lose out but still get the party's ticket for his second term in office.

'Baba will have to bend his rule a bit. He has to be more diplomatic in dealing with the people even if it means meeting some of the elders in the opposition on one- to-one basis and get them to give him their conditions for them to give him their support,' says a member of the group.

He was optimistic that at the end something positive would come out. 'It will not be easy but at the end we will succeed,' he said.