- Written by Akpo Esajere
IT is a euphoric moment for the opposition. But while the wrapping up of merger (read regrouping by power seekers) imbues in politicians first flushes of success, the going is never too easy. Structures would have to be re-gigged. The question of who gets what will inevitably come up.
Opposition politicians can be said to pull a good card last week when a group of seven (G-7) governors and their breakaway faction from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) joined the new kid on the block, All Progressives Congress (APC).
It is a boost to the fledgling APC, no less the widening of the horizon for the party, registered only last July but already showing signs of emerging with more clout if it could fix obvious internal contradictions within its ranks.
One of the outstanding gains of last week’s merging is that the North (read core North) is virtually guaranteed the opportunity to field at least one strong candidate — and on a platform that is emerging as fast-growing in size and by 2015 could command considerable dynamism and political gusto to give the ruling PDP a run for its money.
In effect, a decent try is being made to set up a credible arrangement whereby power at the centre, which had shifted from the North to the South for much of the last 14 years of uninterrupted government by elected people, could return to the North in 2015.
Power had eluded the region with the demise of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, who died on May 5, 2010 after only two years and about 11 months into his first term in office.
This ushered in unexpected truncation of the rotation formula of the presidency between North and South, with which the PDP fought the 1999 presidential election. The far North, comprised of the 13 states of Northwest and Northeast, had felt short-changed since then.
Fulfillment of the objective of the presidency returning to the North is the kernel desire of far North politicians, who fought hard for it but lost in the 2011 presidential election. They have been battling so hard again this time until it became clear to them that they could not outwit President Goodluck Jonathan in the PDP to have the party ticket or stop him from seeking to run for a second term in office.
That desire has been at the very root of the crisis that shook the PDP for most of the last one year. On the surface, the G-7 (actually, G-6; circumstances, probably beyond his control, pushed Governor Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers State over the edge and into the fold), talked ceaselessly of anti-democratic practices, high-handedness, injustices, lack of fair play and such like in the ruling PDP.
But since the PDP took over the reins of government, the party, a behemoth, which enjoys referring to itself as largest party in Africa, along with its rambling army of hardcore adherents and desperate power seekers, including the recent deserters, had thrived on showing healthy disdain and contempt for due process, thus foisting on the country a culture of impunity.
President Jonathan would seem to be a beneficiary of that impunity: Before the PDP convention last year to pick party functionaries, northern politicians had given the game away in a shadow election in Bauchi by selecting Dr. Musa Babayo over Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, Jonathan’s candidate for party chairman. It was the beginning of hostilities, the first bullet fired in the battle to control the PDP headquarters in Abuja.
Recall that Babayo was the party acting secretary under the acting chairmanship of Alhaji Kawu Baraje, the same chairman of the breakaway faction, who announced their merger with the APC last week.
Jonathan needed a trustworthy ally and mild-mannered Tukur, 88, businessman and politician, not in the mould of pro-northern campaigner like Professor Ango Abdullahi or for that matter Dr. Junaid Mohammed, suited the President perfectly.
For added advantage, Tukur’s fourth wife, Mariam, is Ijaw like the president. Indeed, Erelu Bola Shagaya, a socialite, one of the wealthiest women in this country, is reputedly a close friend and confidant of Jonathan’s wife, Patience. Shagaya’s son, Sheriff, is married to Tukur’s daughter.
And so, Tukur, backed by Jonathan has been weathering all the storms to keep the president’s second term hope alive. They not only took control of the party machinery, but using every means available, they also took the fight straight to the governors, who had become too powerful in the party to check them, particularly those identified as opposed to Jonathan running for second term.
In about one year of Tukur’s chairmanship of the PDP, the party National Executive Committee (NEC), where the governors’ caucus is the haymaker, has not been called. Had he done so, they would simply have voted him out.
APC and the Southwest
ANOTHER likely gain of last Tuesday’s marriage is the Southwest, a zone often found relapsing into what its critics like to ridicule it with as “playing cocoon politics” (interpreted to mean tribe/ethnic-based politics).
If all works out well for the APC mergers, the Southwest appears set for the first time to get more fully and actively involved in national politics, also called mainstream politics.
This is likely to be a campaign issue in the zone to be used against Jonathan’s (expected) bid for second term in office in the 2015 election.
Perceived marginalisation of the Southwest surfaced during the eight-year rule of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Although the Yoruba were to gain symbolic comfort of being “in charge” at Abuja (centre), since his emergence was an assumed Yoruba presidential slot, the zone often complained of neglect; that Obasanjo could not point to any tangible thing it did for the Southwest.
That complaining has now heightened to open grumbling against Jonathan, who is repeatedly accused of “total exclusion” of the Yoruba from the corridors of power in all three arms of government. To some, it is “perhaps unintended.” To others, it is “intended.”
In any case, the APC, which is likely to retain its stronghold of the Southwest, and with the possibility of also executing a strong showing in the Northwest, could look forward with hope at 2015.
Even so, the Southwest could come through as a battleground of sorts. While the zone would normally identify with progressive politics (also called “leftist” or “you think human rights” politics), the likelihood of the APC coming up with a northern presidential candidate, thus making 2015 a straight North-South contest, would task the zone.
The age-old sophistication of voters in the zone is all too well-known. Also, the Southwest may have arrived at a crossroads where it is being called to get more actively involved in mainstream politics and could well be still asking itself how to go about it.
APC and the presidential slot
THE APC is a ready platform for a northern presidential candidate. That is all so obvious. It would be out of place for the Yoruba to push for the presidential slot soon after Obasanjo’s eight-year rule.
Indeed, getting a northern ticket is believed to be the sole aim of the Hausa/Fulani community in teaming up with others for the initial merging that led to the APC. Last week’s entrants from the PDP can be said to enhance the party firepower.
But former Head of State and three-times presidential contestant, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, a leading light of that move, whose moribund Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), along with the Ahmed Bola Tinubu-led Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) essentially engineered the initial merger, makes them the principal leaders of the APC. How the PDP entrants will blend in the set-up deserves to be watched.
Politicians form political parties to run for elections. A memorandum of understanding (MOU) is being hammered. How the APC will eventually handle long-standing ambition of Buhari to be president remains an intriguing point.
He commands a cult followership in northern states, especially among the masses and the youths. With the latest addition of PDP former gladiators into APC, this might become a bit more complicated. The conduct of primaries to pick a presidential flagbearer may prove the litmus test for the APC.
It is not clear how it will all jell with former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, a long-standing runner for the presidency. Right now, Atiku is keeping his next moves close to his chest, even while providing some muscles for the PDP breakaway group.
He emerged from the shadow election organised by the Mallam Adamu Ciroma committee of northern elders to select a northern candidate for the 2011 presidential election but lost to Jonathan in the PDP primaries. Buhari, who ran then under his CPC, was himself defeated by Jonathan in the 2011 election.
In some circles of the APC, the idea of coming up with “new bloods” and “doing away with old hands and their baggage” are being pushed around. Names such as Rabiu Kwankwaso, Aminu Tambuwal, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi are mentioned.
But whether any of these personalities could spring a strong enough rivalry against a possible Jonathan appearance in the race is a matter for contention in the party.
In the midst of this, the recent registration of Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM), which Atiku had kept afloat and financed following the passing on of its founder, Gen. Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, is widely believed to be a stand-by strategy for him (Atiku) to have a platform to run in case he failed to make it again in the PDP and even in the APC.
And so, there are speculations that Atiku has the option to talk with the APC or move his followers in the PDM to raise the hand of a northern candidate in the APC, to boost the chances of a chosen northern candidate.
In some political circles, it is said that both Atiku and Buhari could elect to withdraw backstage and be content with pooling forces with other northern elders to back a new breed northern presidential contestant.
Some say Buhari could raise the hand of Kwankwaso in Kano. It would be interesting watching Buhari do so.
The Kano governor’s unpretentiously strong northern sentiments is said to endear him to many in the region, who see him as a good bet to take over from Buhari in the race for the presidency. Tambuwal, the House of Representatives Speaker, is also featuring in the undercurrents.
Jonathan versus his opponents
OF the seven aggrieved PDP governors and their faction moving or moved over to do business in the APC, at least three would be in no hurry to quit the PDP. Babangida Aliyu has said it was only proper to conclude peace talks with Jonathan before taking the next step.
The mercurial, smooth-talking two-term governor of Niger State and chairman of the Northern Governors’ Forum, in addition to being a member of G-7 and hitherto a strong campaigner for power to return to the North, has to soften somewhat, even as he continues to show his face among his protesting colleagues.
Reports quoting unidentified senior officials of the Jonathan presidency tend to cast him in the mold of “the most unreliable of the lot” and sometimes “a traitor.” Last week, he left the meeting with the APC leaders before the splinter group chairman, Baraje, announced the merger with the APC.
Aliyu and his Jigawa State counterpart, Alhaji Sule Lamido, also a two-term governor and an influential actor within the PDP in the last 10 years, who was also not present at the APC/splinter group and merger announcement, are players with deep knowledge of political foot-shuffling.
Although they had emerged as notable champions of the northern project to get the presidency to return to the North, both had also, at some points, been linked to posturing for the presidential ticket.
Among older generation of PDP adherents, they are politicians with clout who had built a formidable following in their domain. They have name recognition and they will not be hasty in moving into uncharted territory or part of inconsequential arrangements with doubtful outcomes.
This may not necessarily have anything to do with their names being mentioned in connection with EFCC cases, although it is quite striking in terms of timing and manner their names spring up.
In 2011, as Jonathan fought for the PDP ticket, Aliyu’s name suddenly came up at the EFCC only to die down. Recently, it came up again.
Lamido’s son was named in connection with alleged money laundering. Now, it is his two sons. But Lamido, a firebrand of the Aminu Kano school of talakawa politics, warned last week that he could not be blackmailed from pursuing any cause he chooses.
Aliyu, a former permanent secretary, is adept at caucus politics. At the FCT, Abuja, he moved close to former President Obasanjo, who took him and, more or less, imposed him on the Niger PDP in the 2007 elections, to outwit the then outgoing governor, Abdulkadir Kure, an Obasanjo critic, who once asserted that the former president had no right to choose his successor. Kure is now said to be working himself back into the good graces of the PDP as a strong supporter of Jonathan.
As for Amaechi and Murtala Nyako, not much can be said about them for now. Amaechi and Jonathan may find a way round their current acrimonious relationship. How that will happen, especially the forms it will take are, is, however, in the womb of the future.
Nyako and Atiku, both from Adamawa State, as well as Tukur, the PDP chairman, have all along pursued topsy-turvy relations, which present one portrait today and another tomorrow. How Nyako will fair in the current jostling cannot be described with precision. Safe to say that at the end of the day, he may not leave the PDP. Adamawa is a PDP state.
Enter the National Conference
UNLESS Jonathan decides to leave a lasting legacy, not much is likely to take place with the proposed National Conference. In any case, until perhaps 2019 if the President secures a second term in office, no serious work may be done.
Before February next when partisan campaign is expected to get into full throttle, the best that may be achieved is for the Senator Femi Okurounmu Presidential Advisory Committee to submit its report, on which basis the government may constitute the conference.
By bringing the conference into the bargain, Jonathan has succeeded in dousing much of the tension that had engulfed his administration. When he inaugurates the body attention will shift there.
Alliances or new discussions are often had among delegates to the conference. In a sense, if delegates are constituted for the current conference, a good number of them could end up being campaigners for Jonathan’s second term bid in the 2015 presidential election. In sum, as one analyst put it: “to defeat an incumbent President is not a picnic; no tea party.”
Over time, the PDP had emerged as an election-winning (some of its adherents even proudly call it “capturing”) machine. Before now, it seemed widely assumed that a runner at the polls is simply a done deal if it were on the platform.
And so, the party primaries were often the real scenes of electoral warfare, characterised by bribery, corruption, abuse of rules and guidelines, intrigues, bitter rivalries, fraud — everything both in the book and outside is put into capturing the ticket.
In the end, the party leadership would manage to negotiate its army of bitter fighters into some form of truce, which it cunningly calls “family affair.”
This time, however, the family broke up!
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