The Battle Line is Drawn.

•Mu’azu with mic flanked by President Goodluck Jonathan (right) and PDP National Secretary Prof Wale Ladipo

THE crises of interests in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are set to get worse, with senators and governors vowing not to yield an inch in their bitter struggle for tickets.

No fewer than nine governors are bidding for Senate tickets – a move that has infuriated many senators who plan to return to the National Assembly.

The senators took their case to President Goodluck Jonathan after a two-day work-to-rule last week.

The President promised them 40 tickets, which they now claim may have been withdrawn after a meeting of governors with the President on Tuesday night.

Benue State Governor Gabriel Suswam said yesterday that the PDP might implode, should tickets be conceded to senators.

Suswam is bidding to take over from Senator Barnabas Gemade. He vowed not to step down for the senator.

PDP senators may renew their work-to-rule. The PDP Senate caucus met for over two hours yesterday after which a source said “firm decisions were taken on a number of issues, including our fate in 2015”.

The emergency closed door meeting was said to have been held after plenary to review the outcome of the Villa parley.

The lawmakers resolved to renew their battle with the Presidency and the party, following information that the party and the Presidency may go back on the agreement to give automatic tickets to no fewer 40 senators.

It was learnt that PDP governors at a meeting with Jonathan on Tuesday insisted that he and the party’s leadership should take another look at automatic tickets for senators.

The governors reportedly said that instead of granting 40 automatic tickets to senators, they (governors) should be allowed to take up the issue and review it on a state-by-state basis.

One of the senators told our correspondent that they saw the governors’ stand as a fresh move to outwit them.

Suspicious of the governors’ plan, the senators resolved to send Mark to the President and the party to drive home their point.

The source said: “Senators are not happy and I can tell you that a number of people are already contemplating ditching the party.”

It was also gathered that 11 senators of the PDP from the Northwest may have threatened to dump the party for what they described as its high handedness.

A source at the meeting said the senators claimed that the PDP ticket was fast becoming a “poisoned chalice” in the zone and that the treatment being meted out to them by the governors was compounding the situation.

“If care is not taken, the PDP could become a minority in the Senate before the end of the year.

“The danger again is that going back and forth on agreements reached with the highest organs of the PDP is painting a bad picture of the party,” a source at the meeting said.

Suswam said though he had tremendous respect for Gemade, he would contest his seat.

He insisted that politics is not based on age but on the people’s acceptance.

Suswam, who spoke with reporters in Abuja, said concession of elective offices is not democratic.

He said as a democratic party, the PDP would not initiate or promote a policy that will lead to the implosion of the party.

Suswam said: “No. No. No. The PDP is a highly democratic party and all of you know. PDP will not bring a policy that will create problem and create self implosion in the party.

“The party has not given any person automatic ticket. Even with President Goodluck, we unanimously adopted him as our sole candidate and we want that to be a precedent subsequently that a sitting president should have the right of first refusal.

“We want to also extend that to governors eventually. But this is what will evolve. It is not something that you go and put as a law. So, no person has given any senator any automatic ticket.

“The party and the President feel that as we grow institutions, that certain things should be part of growing that institution but this is by way of an appeal where is it is possible and practicable and so when people begin to engage in propaganda and say they were given automatic tickets, that is not the way democracy is practised.”

He went on:”There is nothing like that. No such arrangement or no such meeting has taken place and no person has promised any person any automatic ticket anywhere.

“Where there is consensus and acceptance, that is possible, but where people feel that they should go to the field, the party has allowed those people to go to the field.

“So there is nothing like automatic ticket given to any person. The person who would have been given automatic ticket would have been the President but that wasn’t done.

“What was done was that the governors met and said, ‘look we will support only President Jonathan’.

“The legislature said, look we will support only President Jonathan and when the National Working Committee of the party met and the National Executive Committee, they also unanimously agreed that the President should be the sole candidate of our own party.

Suswam said Gemade promised to serve only one term in the Ssenate when he contested in 2011.

Suswam said: “I have nothing against Senator Gemade and I still respect him up till tomorrow as an elder of the state and as an elder statesman of this country.

“But then we are in a contest. Political contest is not about age. It is about who the people want and the people want me in that zone and based even on our own understanding in the senatorial zone, he should not be feeling entitled – you know there is an entitled mentality.

“That is what is the problem. If something does not belong to you by the local arrangement on ground and you now feel entitled because you were this you were that, all of us have been something.

“So I believe that we should go to the contest. I am not saying that he should step down for me. I will not go to Mr. President to ask Gemade to step down for me.

“If we go to the field and he defeats me I will support him and I expect the same from him. But this propaganda in the newspapers that the Presidency or Abuja has stepped in, that won’t work. That will not work.”