The peace that is gradually returning to the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, could be under threat as who will be the Vice Presidential candidate of the party appears to be in the way between President Goodluck Jonathan and former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

While President Jonathan feels comfortable with Namadi Sambo, the present Vice President as his running mate in the February 14, 2015 presidential election, Chief Obasanjo is demanding that Jigawa State governor, Sule Lamido, be offered the job.

President Jonathan and Chief Obasanjo met recently shortly after the President’s trip from Paris last week where he had attended the summit on insecurity in Africa.

It was confirmed that the meeting was centred on President Jonathan’s 2015 presidential ambition as well as the spate of terror attacks in the north.

Obasanjo, who had initially objected to Jonathan’s return bid in 2015 still stood his ground but gave a condition to back Jonathan.

He wanted the president to drop Sambo for Lamido, a proposal President Jonathan was not comfortable with.

According to the source who is a top PDP officer, “It is true that both leaders met last Sunday to discuss matters of national interest; you should know that it is only sensible for the President to have audience with Baba Obasanjo in view of the insecurity situation in some parts of the north.

“There is also nothing wrong in the two leaders meeting to iron out differences if at all there are, but the only snag in what a section of the media carried was just out of context; the former president cannot say President Jonathan should not run because he knows too well that Mr President has the constitutional right to run for another term.

“The only thing which I can tell you in confidence that featured in their discussions was that the former president sounded the president out on the various agitations that have mounted against his vice from the North West region of the PDP.

“He reminded the President that unlike Abubakar Atiku in his days, Architect Namadi Sambo does not command the required political followership in the North West zone to carry the PDP afloat if at all he (Obasanjo) decided to back Jonathan for 2015. By inference, the former leader was canvassing that Sambo be dropped for someone else.”

Lamido is the former president’s godson; he had appointed him as Foreign Affairs minister in 1999; wanted him as governor of Jigawa; he failed twice but made it in 2007.

Obasanjo has severally spoken of the qualities of Lamido as a potential president of Nigeria. It was the former President that persuaded Governor Lamido to stay put with PDP at a point when other aggrieved PDP governors decamped to the opposition All Progressives Congress late last year.

Amongst the governors include Rotimi Amaechi (Rivers), Aliyu Wammako (Sokoto), Abdulfatah Ahmed (Kwara), Rabiu Kwankwaso (Kano) and Murtala Nyako (Adamawa).

The refusal of Lamido and Niger State governor, Babangida Aliyu, to join the other five governor restored hope to the PDP and the presidential aspiration of President Jonathan.

It is however believed that the card on the board is the only way the President will get the support of these two governors as well as the former President.

The source confirmed that the former president concluded by saying Sule Lamido would make a better rallying point for the party in the North West come 2015, expressing optimism that at least three of the five PDP governors who dumped the party for APC would return if Lamido was picked.

President Jonathan, according to the source, could not make any commitment as he was yet to see what in particular Sambo had done wrong to warrant being dropped and the fact that he was more at home with Sambo as vice than any other.

Also, he reminded the former president that the most popular item of criticism of his administration is that he had paid lip service to corruption which in actual fact is not. And that, picking Lamido was as good as endorsing corruption in view of the alleged money laundering charges against two of his sons recently and that the opposition would swoop on this and isolate the issue to mean that he, Jonathan, has endorsed corruption by trying to cover up Lamido’s sons.

Lately, Lamido has been touted to be oiling his political machinery to give a shot at the nation’s top job.(National Mirror)