A ‘shot of power’ is too little to intoxicate. Two or more will do
It is fast becoming obvious that the wrangling in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is nowhere near solution, going by the recent declaration in the United States by President Goodluck Jonathan that he never signed any pact to the effect that he would not go for a second term. This is at the heart of the PDP crisis, with his opponents, even in the party saying he should not run because of the alleged pact.. Jonathan had, during a media chat last year, declared that he was yet to decide whether or not to contest in 2015. He said his decision on the subject would be made public next year because making a definite pronouncement on the subject then would distract his administration from delivering on its campaign promises. But, is this what is on ground?
Be that as it may, neither the President nor those who claimed he signed a one-term pact has rested since the Niger State Governor, Dr. Babangida Aliyu, made the allegation early this year. ”I recall that that some of us said given the circumstances of the death of President Yar’Adua, and given the PDP zoning arrangement, it was expected that the North was to produce the President for a given number of years. I recall that at that discussion, it was agreed that Jonathan would serve only one term of four years and we all signed the agreement. Even when Jonathan went to Kampala, in Uganda, he also said he was going to serve a single term …” Aliyu made the revelation during a live broadcast of Guest of the Week, on Kaduna-based FM radio station, Liberty Radio (91.7).
But one of the things that usually baffle me in this kind of situation is the way the aides of those concerned speak authoritatively as if they were party to the actions in question. Some of President Jonathan’s aides have denied categorically that the president never signed any one term pact with anybody. Unfortunately, not all of them who are now defending him, and vehemently so, as if they were there when the purported agreement was signed or not signed, are competent to speak on the matter. For instance, his spokesman, Dr Reuben Abati, has no ‘locus standi’ in it. As at the time in question, Abati was not yet in government. I guess that was when he still saw the ruling PDP as Papa Deceive Pikin. Today, (since he cannot beat them he has joined them) it is either papa is no longer deceiving pikin or he has joined the party so that they can deceive pikin together.
The same applies to the Special Adviser to the President on Political Matters, Ahmed Gulak, who has also insisted that there was no time President Jonathan entered into a single-term pact. “Rather than insisting on an agreement that does not exist – since anybody can contest for the highest office in the land, those who are so interested should declare their interest and contest”, he was once quoted to have said. I know these people have a job to do, but I would be comfortable if they had said the President said he never did this or that, instead of speaking authoritatively on a matter they were least competent to speak on. I started pitying people doing such jobs since the time former Governor James Ibori’s corruption saga began and his press secretary denied that his boss was not a thief. We now know better.
However, the fact is, constitutionally speaking, the President as well as governors are entitled to a second term, provided that is the wish of Nigerians or the citizens of their states; that is to say if they give the incumbents their nod in the election. Therefore, if anything would stand between President Jonathan and his second term ambition; that should not be any group of governors but the collective wish of Nigerians.
The matter is even made worse by the report that, in the characteristic Nigerian manner, the document that the President allegedly signed with the 23 PDP governors on the pact is now missing. In Nigeria, anything can be missing, without anybody being called to account for it. We were told the other day that the Okigbo report on the $12billion Gulf oil windfall feared to have been squandered by the Babangida regime was missing. That is Nigeria for you. But if the governors would leave such a vital document in the custody of a south south governor (the president’s geo-political zone), and they do not have any other copy, that is their cup of tea. It shows how naïve they were. I only hope this is another dummy they have sold to the Presidency because there is one saving grace that they still have; if they make the document public at any time and convince Nigerians about its authenticity, then, they can compound the President’s problems by claiming that he is unreliable. And who wants an unreliable President? But the G7 Governors should not make their intra-party affair a cause of mayhem in the country.
If they truly have fallen out of the PDP, they should not behave like the Bamanga Tukur-led PDP that can neither throw the G7 Governors and their supporters away, nor fully accede to their terms for ceasefire. In other words, when Tukur and Co. were told to eat something, they say it is bone, and when told to throw it away, they still claim there is some meat in it. The G7 Governors should be resolute about their plan. Like most other concerned Nigerians, they also have a right to say the President has not done well and therefore cannot be reelected. But this is not by threatening fire and brimstone; otherwise, they would be meeting the President’s forces on the turf that the latter are familiar with; brawn where brain will do.
My argument is that the governors know what to do legitimately if they want to stop the President from running for second term: they should team up with people with similar objective (that I am sure are in the legion, and still counting) and bring the strategy and tactics as well as the ingenuity the ruling party had been using to ‘win’ elections to the alliance. That is the only way to pull the rug off the feet of the PDP.
But if anybody thinks the battle to wrest Nigeria from the ruling party will be easy, that person is mistaken. Nigeria’s presidency is, to many Nigerian politicians, like the kingdom of God which suffereth violence and only the violent taketh it by force. This has nothing to do with whether the aspirant had no shoes as a child or whether he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. The fact is that there is so much power in the Presidency just as there is so much money in it. So, how can anyone be talking about one man, one term, when there is so much at stake? Even Chief Olusegun Obasanjo who had been military head of state before he became president did not want to leave after serving the constitutionally approved two terms. The man simply played the deaf when some people asked him to adopt the ‘Mandela option’. Nigerians denied him a third shot at the office that he craved, the same way they denied General Ibrahim Babangida a chance to return to the seat of power to retrieve whatever it was that he forgot there.
Tell me, if there is nothing in the place, why would most of the people that have ever got there, including our revered General Yakubu Gowon, be shifting handover dates over the flimsiest of excuses? When even those who are not from the part of the country where President Jonathan hails from were not satisfied with just a ‘shot of power’; (like the Eb..ra man, they always wanted more tomflers (tumblers)), how can we expect the president who comes from a place where they drink like fish to be? A shot? No. Only two or more will do, Baba ta ni’se wu? (Who is at home with poverty?) Agreement my foot! One term! One term!
