A plot to remove Nasarawa State Governor Umaru Al-Makura and supplant him with his deputy is being hatched by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Presidency’s foot soldiers, according to a Daily Trust report.

“Already the PDP is wooing Deputy Governor Dameshi Barau Luka to defect from the All Progressives Congress (APC) ahead of the impeachment, after which he would then take over as a PDP governor and work for the party’s victory in 2015 elections,” the paper reported this morning.

It recalled that the relationship between Al-Makura and his deputy has been frosty since late last year, saying: “Luka has been seen hobnobbing with PDP chiefs, including President Goodluck Jonathan, with whom he worshipped at a church near Keffi in January. After the church service, Luka criticised the APC for asking its federal lawmakers to block executive bills over ‘impunity’ in Rivers State.

“The state chapter of the APC later suspended the deputy governor from the party, citing the statements he made on the APC directive.”

Daily Trust quoted a source as saying: “He (Luka) will defect to the PDP on the eve of the impeachment and will become the governor eventually, on the platform of the PDP. That is the game-plan.”

The paper also quoted sources in PDP as saying that President Jonathan and other PDP bigwigs are scheduled to attend a big rally in the next couple of weeks in Lafia to receive APC defectors, among them the deputy governor as well as Senator Solomon Ewuga.

According to the paper, “Members of the Nasarawa State House of Assembly are involved with the impeachment plot, and already impeachable offences are being complied against the governor.”

PDP has 19 members in the assembly, while Al-Makura’s APC has five lawmakers. The governor had been finding it difficult to work with the assembly since his assumption of office in May 2011. He has so far managed to stay afloat, but a politician aware of the impeachment plot said the governor may not be able to stand up to this “gang-up.”

When contacted last night by Daily Trust, the Presidency said it was not plotting to instigate Al-Makura’s impeachment but said Luka had decided on his own to defect to the PDP.

“The Presidency has never wooed or invited the deputy governor of Nasarawa State to join the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). It is the deputy governor himself that has decided to defect to the PDP and Mr. President cannot say no to it,” President Jonathan’s Political Adviser Ahmed Ali Gulak said by telephone.

“On the question you asked about the Presidency and the PDP plotting to instigate Al-Makura’s impeachment, all I can tell you is that there is nothing like impeachment.”

A spokesman for the PDP in Nasarawa State, Mr. John Mark Neto, said there is no official documentation showing Luka will join the PDP, although he confirmed that he heard rumours of Mr. Luka’s defection.

While the deputy governor’s spokesman Danjuma Joseph said he had no idea of any impeachment plot against Al-Makura, a spokesman for the governor, Mr. Iliyasu Ali Yakubu, did not confirm nor deny the impeachment plot, saying: “It’s by some special and divine intervention by God himself and the genuine commitment and adherence to due process and the constitution that is saving the governor.

“The circumstances that brought the governor into office are the same circumstances that he has had to govern the state these three years. It has been three years of bashing, but the governor has remained steadfast to meeting the developmental needs of his people, God’s own people.”

•Photo shows Governor Umaru Al-Makura of Nasarawa State.