Jonathan, Abacha’s son in closed-door meeting

President Goodluck Jonathan on Friday met behind closed-door with Mohammed Abacha, son of a former Head of State, the late Gen. Sani Abacha, on issues suspected to bother on the forthcoming primaries of the Peoples Democratic Party. Abacha is a governorship aspirant of the PDP in Kano State. Conyinue...

Governorship primaries of the party holdnationwide on Monday.

At the end of the meeting held at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, the aspirant told State House correspondents that he was confident that the PDP would recover its stolen mandate from the All Progressives Congress in the state during the 2015 general elections.

He said he was hopeful that he would clinch the party’s ticket.

He said, “We are hopeful; I wouldn’t want to say too much. I said it before that it was a PDP state; it was a PDP ticket. It was taken or converted or even stolen; whatever you want to call it, so be it. The chances of the PDP are still bright.”

It will be recalled that the Federal Government had in June withdrawn the N446.3bn theft charges instituted against the younger Abacha.

The government had preferred the nine counts of stealing against him in February 2014.

The prosecution accused Abacha of unlawfully receiving about N446.3bn allegedly stolen from government’s coffers between 1995 and 1998.

Government later asked Justice Mamman Kolo of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, in Wuse Zone 2, Abuja, to strike out the charges on the grounds of “fresh facts” that just emerged concerning the case.

The government’s decision attracted criticisms from individuals and groups.

Those who flayed the action included prominent Lagos lawyers – Femi Falana, Jiti Ogunye, Fred Agbaje and Femi Aborisade – as well as the Chairman of the Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders, Mr. Debo Adeniran; and his Civil Society Network Against Corruption counterpart, Mr. Lanre Suraj.

While some of the lawyers argued that the government action had serious negative implications for the country’s anti-graft campaign, Adeniran and Suraj said it had a political undertone.