North’s battles to stop Jonathan in 2015 Written by Saturday, 14 September 2013 00:00 font size decrease font size increase font size Print Email Rate this item 1 2 3 4 5 (0 votes) раскрутка сайтов AddThis Social Bookmark Button Since democracy returned to Nigeria in 1999, it is difficult to find any other administration that has faced more political heat and battles than the current one led by President Goodluck Jonathan. IDOWU SAMUEL, attributes this to the resolve by the North to regain presidential power in 2015. FOR the past two years, northern Nigeria as a political entity has been battling for political survival, and at the receiving end is the government of the federation currently headed by President Goodluck Jonathan, a southerner from Bayelsa State. The region believes that the presidential power it lost almost 15 years ago is reclaimable. However, the hope of attaining that desired victory, most especially in 2015, is still a long shot. The North, which had won several political battles in the past, appears to have lost its magic wand. The region once enjoyed a high measure of strength as a monolith, but that changed some years ago owing to the severance of ties between it and the Middle Belt. This time around, the North will be entering the battle ground in 2015 with less than its full strength. The changing face of northern politics is a reason 2015 may end up as good fun to political observers across the country. Battles against Jonathan The North’s battle against Jonathan has been getting fiercer by the day. The president has stepped on toes, first in the north-western part, with his resolve to contest the 2011 presidential election. The general belief in the zone that it deserved the chance to produce a candidate to replace the late President Umaru Yar’Adua in the 2011 presidential election made Jonathan’s candidature sound abominable. But the power of incumbency and the effusive pro-South-South sentiments which were freely whipped up all worked together to ensure victory for Jonathan. Expectedly, mutual distrust deepened between the elected president and the aggrieved North-West. The factor of General Muhammadu Buhari in the 2011 presidential race swelled up the anti-Jonathan outrage in the North. Buhari, with his cult-like followership in some parts of the North, discredited the presidential election results, making his followers believe that he was robbed. Before long, Buhari was accused of inciting war, as northern youths trooped to the streets in violent protests against Jonathan’s election. From then on, Nigeria started becoming almost ungovernable as acts of terrorism took the centre stage in some parts of the North. The rattled Federal Government had no other option than to declare a full scale war against terrorism. Yet, terrorism was never the only problem Jonathan had to contend with. APC as new option The drama that led to the formation of All Progressives Congress (APC) was a script written by the aggrieved political players in the North, in concert with their allies from the South who had complained of being marginalised in the government of Jonathan. If anything, the APC formation places a strong hope and emphasis on using the aggrieved North to build strength to dislodge Jonathan’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2015. General Buhari is a strong player in the APC’s game plan. At the moment, the party can conveniently boast of 11 states and is confident that it can win more states sufficiently to take the presidency in 2015. In the political circles of Nigeria today, the threats constituted by the APC to the government of President Jonathan is getting more real. The ripples set off by the APC has been having telling effects, as more political parties have been springing up with an agenda to neutralise APC on many fronts. Yet, the opposition party has continued to savour the current debilitating implosion in the PDP, its strongest contender in the 2015 race. Atiku/Baraje’s New PDP While the North continues to fight Jonathan on the platform of APC, it nonetheless depends on efforts by the former Vice President Atiku Abubakar within the same northern axis to ease out the president by 2015. No doubt, Atiku controls a political bloc in the North, having demonstrated sufficient strength over the years on party organisation and fight for survival. He has been a recurring decimal in the presidential races in Nigeria, beginning from 1993 when he contested the presidential ticket of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and came third after Babagana Kingibe and MKO Abiola. He attempted to dislodge Obasanjo as a sitting president in 2003, but backed down due to party arrangement. In 2007, he lost the presidential election to the late Umaru Yar’Adua when he contested the election on the platform of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). Having lost the presidential election again in 2011 to Jonathan, Atiku, shrewd in politics, perhaps felt that it was time for him now to be compensated. He has been a principal actor in the plan to balkanise the ruling party. Atiku has been rallying forces in the North for the sole aim of helping the North to regain presidential power. And he did not just start doing that. Before 2011, the North faced a dilemma of picking a presidential candidate among the trio of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, General Aliyu Gusau and Atiku. Then, it was expedient that a consensus candidate should emerge from the three. It was Atiku who carried the day. He achieved that through his political wizardry. His influence in the break-away faction of the PDP is one reason Jonathan should watch his back and not underrate the New PDP elements. In the event that the New PDP eventually transforms into a new political party with the support of the G5 northern governors as pay masters and godfathers, there is no over-emphasising the likelihood that the 2015 presidential election will not be a walkover for PDP and Jonathan. Northern governors’ rage Another joker the North seems to be pulling against Jonathan is in the form of the eagerness by the aggrieved governors in the region to tackle him. Governors Babangida Aliyu (Niger), Sule Lamido (Jigawa), Rabiu Musa Kwonkwoso (Kano), Magatakarda Aliyu Wamakko (Sokoto) and Murtala Nyako (Adamawa) have been working as a team, causing considerable nightmares for Jonathan, whose body language shows that he has his eyes on the next presidential election. The rage of the governors was glaring when it became crystal clear that the PDP would no longer serve as an avenue for the North to regain power. Three of the governors – Kwankwaso, Lamido and Nyako – had been touted as presidential hopefuls. But the PDP’s Board of Trustees Chairman, Chief Tony Anenih, has made it clear that the party’s presidential ticket remains the exclusive preserve of the incumbent president, thus hinting that there may be no contest in the PDP for that slot. Anenih’s postulation was a reason the aggrieved governors insisted in their demand that Jonathan relinquish his ambition to recontest the presidential election in 2015. So far, the president has been demonstrating uncanny calmness in attending to the grievances of the governors, notwithstanding pressures on him to wield the big stick. Many people believe that he is treading softly on this turf because he regards the aggrieved governors as a factor in PDP which he cannot afford to toy with. It remains to be seen whether the stoic approach by Jonathan to the gang-up by the northern governors will eventually prove to be the ultimate solution the PDP has been seeking to regain its groove in politics. модули joomla 2.5 Read 648 times Published in Politics
Posted on: Sat, 14 Sep 2013 09:06:34 +0000