SIR: If the PDP governors are true believers of democracy, they should take the so-called presidency and its fixers head-on and vow not to be intimidated by their threats to impose President Jonathan on PDP members. Those calling themselves leaders and friends of the president have no right, whatsoever, to tell PDP members who to elect. If they so believe in President Jonathan, the party’s National Convention is there to test his popularity, instead of trying to intimidate PDP governors into supporting a cause they do not believe in. Besides, apart from a few opportunists among the PDP governors, Jonathan has not earned their support.
One can’t help but be amazed at Chief Edwin Clark’s comments, when he claimed that the NGF should be dissolved. The NGF should know that if they ignore or run away from their bullies, they will keep coming after them. Like with dogs, turning tail in flight is a signal for pursuit. And if they yield to their threats, the threats will keep aiming higher as they will become victims, and find it increasingly harder to overcome the bullies. There is only one proper response to leaders-turned-backyard bullies. Stare them down, stay the course and stand up to them.
Jonathan and his praise-singers should be smart enough to know that no amount of threats, intimidation and blackmail will make the governors change their position on the candidate that they want to elect. Determined governors must be ready to take battering, tumbles and bruises, no matter how grievous they seem, because truth and right are on their side.
Spin doctors in the presidency, it seems, have misled the President that they really know the country called Nigeria. Do they even feel the pulse of PDP members, let alone that of Nigerians? This ignorance, which some people misconstrued as arrogance, has led them scurrying to re-install sacked National Working Committee members from the South West PDP, a move akin to eating their vomit, all in a bid to pacify already perceived enemies to support the President’s re-election project. This is just the beginning of a series of dog fights in the party as 2015 approaches.
Interestingly, President Jonathan has put so much faith in the troika of Bamanga Tukur, Tony Anenih and Godswill Akpabio, and his mouth piece, Edwin Clark; men that talk from both sides of their mouth. One writer even noted that Anenih was appointed BoT Chairman to reposition PDP. Excuse me; is it PDP Edo or PDP Nigeria? Has Anenih been able to reposition PDP in Edo State? Here is a man that has since been demystified and sent to the cleaners by Governor Adams Oshiomhole. Twice.
In one breath, Clark says Jonathan is PDP’s sole candidate, in another, he says nobody should be stopped from contesting as “the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria guaranteed equality of all Nigerians to seek elected offices, when and where necessary”. So anybody can contest on the platform of an opposition party but no PDP member has the constitutional right to contest because of Jonathan?
Akpabio said the PDP Governor’s Forum will try to identify Judases amongst them; the same Judases Anenih is demanding total loyalty from, and the same Judases that, according to Tukur, have been giving Jonathan sleepless nights?
On what moral ground can these men stand on to lecture other people on politics and democracy when their own party is collapsing? Everything is in black and white now, and Nigerians expect the Presidency to respect the democratic will of the various states governors and their people.
• Lloyd Robinson
Port Harcourt, Rivers State
