… as Gbenga Daniel Decamps to APC

Former President Goodluck Jonathan has met with the party’s Reconciliation and Strategy Committee, as the party tries to weather the storms ward off recent threats to its membership and survival.

The meeting is coming on the heels of the announcement by Gbenga Daniel, former governor of Ogun State and a staunch member of the party, that he has joined the ruling All Progressives Congress.

PDP last year appointed former Senate President, Bukola Saraki to head its national reconciliation committee.

“As part of our efforts to listen to the concerns of key stakeholders across our great party, this afternoon, the @OfficialPDPNig Reconciliation & Strategy Committee is meeting with our immediate past President, H.E. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (@GEJonathan),” Saraki tweeted Tuesday.

The Reconciliation Committee also has another former Senate President, Anyim Pius Anyim, and former governor of Cross River State, Liyel Imoke as members.

Jonathan himself has been the subject of some political permutations, with some analysts going as far as saying that the former President of Nigeria is being primed as the 2023 presidential candidate of APC, with Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, as his vice.

The speculation was not unfounded, as the PDP began to lose sleep in late 2020, following several meetings involving Jonathan and some leaders of the APC including Governors.

The video accompanying Saraki’s tweet showed Jonathan exchanging banters with the PDP leaders.

“You are welcome,” Jonathan is heard saying to them,  as he received the delegation.

The meeting is holding on a day that Daniel, one-time campaign manager for Atiku Abubakar, PDP’s presidential candidate in the last presidential candidate, is expected to register with the APC in the party’s ongoing membership revalidation exercise.

“I thought I should quickly brief the house before the news goes viral,” he said. The statement made available to Vanguard read that “Dear Friends & Colleagues, pardon my short notice in informing you of my route to the APC which as you might have suspected started with my supporting Governor Dapo Abiodun during the last election. “I have since experienced an avalanche of encouragement to come on board,” Daniel said in a statement apologizing to his former party.