2015 ARITHMETIC PERMUTATION: The scenarios are obvious and they all point to a President in his decline and fall: President Goodluck Jonathan is faced with bad luck in all directions. Let us look at the arithmetic.The arithmetic starting from the APC governors, the President should not expect a support from their eleven states. For ethnic reasons, one may allow him the majority votes of Edo state. That takes away the support of eleven governors and the majority votes of ten states. Then Jonathan is certain to lose the majority votes in six of the seven New PDP governors – that is granting him Rivers State who may decide to support him for ethnic reasons. This brings the number of states that the President may lose their majority votes to sixteen. Then come the six (6) states of Bauchi, Gombe, Katsina, Kebbi, Kogi and Kaduna in which the President will also lose their majority votes though the governors are yet to abandon him. He lost them in 2011, some woefully. This brings the number of states against the President to a staggering figure of twenty-two. Taraba state is uncertain, the votes being likely to be shared equally between the APC candidate and the President. That leaves the President with the majority of the votes of only Benue and Plateau States in the North for obvious reasons die hard loyalists in the persons of Governors Suswam and Jonah Jang, plus, of course, the majority votes in the southeast, South-South and, possibly, non-APC states of Ondo and neighbouring Ekiti in the southwest which is very dicey. Even here, the states and zones are not big enough on the voters register to make any significant impact, with some having as low as 472,00 votes (Bayelsa) when compared to Lagos (6million) and Kano (5million) votes, both of which are not supporting the President. I will come to another possibility where the opposition can win the overwhelming majority votes in all states of southwest without exception. But before then, let us see what the above arithmetic means in terms of voter-opportunity for the President – a complete bad luck: 22.9million against 45.7million or one-third against two thirds! I have presented below the total number of voters in each state belonging to the President and the opposition APC. Jonathan States 1.Bayelsa State-472,389, 2.Ekiti State- 750,753, 3.Ebonyi State-876,249 4.CrossRiver State-1,018,550, 5.Enugu State-1,301,185, 6.Benue State-1,415,162 7.Abia State- 1,481,191, 8.Ondo State-1,558,975, 9.Imo State- 1,611,715, 10.AkwaIbom State-1,714,781, 11.Anambra State-1,758,220, 12.Delta State- 1,900,055 13.Plateau State-1,983,453, 14.Rivers State-2,419,057, 15.Edo State- 1,412,225, 16.Taraba State-1,308,106 TOTAL =22,982,066 APC Candidate States 1.Fct- 886,323, 2.Kwara State-1,115,665, 3.Yobe State- 1,182,230, 4.Kogi State- 1,215,405, 5.Nasarawa State-1,224,206, 6.Gombe State-1,266,993, 7.Osun State- 1,293,967, 8.Kebbi State-1,603,468, 9.Adamawa State-1,714,860, 10.Niger State-1,721,478, 11.Zamfara State-1,746,024, 12.Bauchi State-1,835,562 13.Jigawa State-1,852,698, 14.Sokoto State-2,065,508, 15.Oyo State-2,577,490, 16.Borno State-2,730,368, 17.Katsina State-2,931,668, 18.Kaduna State-3,565,762, 19.Kano State- 5,135,415, 20.Lagos State-6,247,845, 21.Ogun State-1,869,326 TOTAL =45,782,261 Depending on who the APC fields as its presidential candidate, the President may not even get the votes of Ekiti and Ondo states. That makes his chances bleaker: 20.6million against 48million votes. This picture is a complete bad luck for the President in two ways. If the opposition is able to join hands with the New PDP, pick a winning candidate, mobilise its voters and fight fiercely to protect the votes, then it is certain to defeat the President at the polls in 2015, hands down. There is simply no way the President can bridge the gap between 14 states that he would have and the 22, plus the FCT, against him. I cannot see how he can leap from a majority of 22million votes to position himself above the majority of 48 million. Stepping Down what may make the depiction even darker is the possibility that once the ship of the President starts sinking, the remaining governors may abandon it and he may not be sure of anything anymore. At that point, I have no doubt that the party will be wise enough to prevail on him to step down and stay as a lame duck for the rest of his tenure, defeated, deflated and disgraced by bad luck. That is the path he has chosen and he has himself to blame for it.
Posted on: Fri, 06 Sep 2013 16:54:22 +0000
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