President Goodluck Jonathan faces a Herculean task, should he decide to contest the 2015 presidential election as political manoeuvrings and alignments have commenced in several quarters across the country to stop him from having another shot at the presidency after his current tenure elapses.
Although the President is yet to categorically state whether he will contest the poll or not, opting to concentrate on delivering the goals of his Transformation Agenda, those behind the plot are of the view that his body language point to the fact that he is interested in a second term despite an alleged agreement that he would only have a single tenure.
Unlike the 2011 elections in which the President enjoyed massive support from almost all the six geo-political zones of the country, the North is in the vanguard of the plot to stop him in the next elections, as some political leaders in the region insist that power must return to the area in 2015.
The Northern leaders have never hidden their frustration over the Jonathan presidency, given their believe that he breached the power sharing arrangement of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, which would have ensured that power remained in the area even after the death of late President Umaru Yar’Adua in 2010.
Two main groups in the region; Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, and Northern Elders’ Forum, NEF, which are in the vanguard of the “Jonathan must go campaign,” have persistently argued that there are abundant reasons why Nigerians should not entrust the President with the leadership of the country beyond May 2015.
The ACF and NEF are not alone in the campaign, they are backed by other pro- North groups such as the Arewa Reawakening Forum, Arewa Research and Development Project, Northern Union and the Code Group.
Former Presidential Adviser on Food Security, Prof. Ango Abdullahi, who is the arrowhead of the crusade, said the reasons revolve around what he called the president’s betrayal of the process that brought him into office. His words: “When former President Olusegun Obasanjo wanted an extension of tenure for a second term under the zoning arrangement, he had to come to an extended caucus of the PDP.
“…Eventually, about 37 people out of the 41 present voted for the extension for Obasanjo to have a second term. Now coming to why we should not trust people who renege on promises. Obasanjo was the first to deny that there was a zoning that brought him to power. He did that and kept doing it and it is most likely it was from him that they learnt what they are doing because he was instrumental to Jonathan becoming Vice President.
“So, Jonathan must be Obasanjo’s student on matters of zoning because he himself kept saying, when we were arguing that Jonathan rightly became the president of the country when Yar’Adua died, ‘This is what the constitution allows’ and in fact insisted on it and nobody begrudged that.”
The ACF on its part, through its National Chairman, Alhaji Aliko Mohammed, maintained that the North will not compromise its political interest, adding that “it is necessary for leaders of the zone to come together for a common vision, goal and strategy needed to negotiate from the position of strength and secure a favourable camp in politics.”
While the ACF and NEF have painted their clamour as a collective agitation by the people of the 19 states that make up the North, some prominent elders and political leaders in the region, including former military governor of Plateau and Katsina states, Maj. Gen. Lawrence Onoja (rtd), former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Engr. Mohammed Abba Gana, and Third Republic Senate President, Ameh Ebute have expressed support for Jonathan’s second term bid.
The Northern elders, who spoke in separate recent interviews with National Mirror, unanimously agreed that the North will lose nothing if Jonathan is reelected for a second term. Onoja said: “It is not yet time for power to shift to the North. Mr. President has not done his second term.
All the other presidents were given the opportunity to do their second terms and Mr. President by virtue of the fact that he is a minority like me, it would be unfair and injustice to stop him from doing his second term. If he finishes his second term in 2019, then other areas can agitate for power shift.”
The former Principal Staff Officer to late Gen. Sani Abacha described as misconception, the notion in some political quarters that the agitation for power shift is a Northern agenda, saying: “The North of the sixties when Sarduana was alive is no longer the same North today. So, if you say I am from the North, and you are referring to the old North yes, I am from the North, but now, the Middle Belt is a geographical reality and I am a member of the Middle Belt. I am not from the core North.”
To Abba Gana, allowing Jonathan another four years will not take anything away from the North, as the region has produced about eight or nine former heads of state and it did not take away poverty from the region.
On the perception that the region is in unison in the bid to stop the President, the Borno State-born politician, averred: “The North is not against President Jonathan because there are several well respected Northern leaders the media may not know, who are supporting him,” adding that the likes of Abdullahi and his NEF do not speak for the North, as political parties are the only recognised institutions through which one can present oneself for an election.
His words: “The NEF led by Ango Abdullahi is just an interest group which is pursuing what I see as their own view of Northern interest, but there are other groups which are against them in the same North. Some people in the North want the presidency to come back to the region in 2015, but at the same time, others are saying there is nothing wrong in allowing President Jonathan to complete his eight years for fairness.
We should not be talking as if the North has never had any president. We have had about eight or nine presidents, yet all the poverty, illiteracy, crises are in the North. So, if the previous eight or nine leaders, who are Northerners, did not make any difference, is it the remaining years of Jonathan that will kill the North?
Senator Ebute, who advised the Northern political leaders opposed to Jonathan’s ambition in like manner, said: “The North whose definition, I am not too sure includes the Middle Belt, should wait until the person whom God has given the Presidency completes his tenure. When he completes his second term, one can now argue that the turn should now come to the North and that North should include all the zones in the North, not only the North-West.”
Dismissing the position of the ACF and NEF, the former Senate President noted that there are millions of Northerners besides those who belong to the two groups, who believe in the administration of Jonathan.
According to him, “when one person, representing a few people and being funded by some governors and holding press conferences virtually every day is putting up his own ideas, you cannot say that the ideas are the thoughts of everybody within the North.”
The region, he further said, has no reason to be disenchanted, as it had been in power more than any other region. “Why should the North be disenchanted? We started the federation system in 1979 when President Shehu Shagari was the president for four years; he entered the second term when the military took over from him. The head of the military that took over from him was from the North, Muhammadu Buhari. Then almost one year in office, another Northerner took over from him, Ibrahim Babangida and he was in office for nine years. That is about 10 years with Buhari’s tenure and then Sani Abacha came before Abdlusalami Abubakar.”
As Gana rightly pointed out, the Abdullahi- led NEF and its like are non-governmental organisations and therefore will not play a major role during the elections. However, some political analysts opined that it would be to the peril of the President’s camp to dismiss them, as it appears that they have the support of a few governors in the region, especially those whose tenures would be elapsing in 2015, and are reported to have interest in the Presidency.
While it is the constitutional right of the pro-North groups to clamour for the Presidency, they would be facing a daunting task in convincing the people of the region that their agitation was not one motivated by selfish interest, given the roles some of their leaders played when the Mallam Adamu Ciroma-led Northern Political Leaders’ Forum, NPLF, came up with former Vice President Atiku Abubakar as the region’s consensus candidate in the 2011 PDP presidential primaries that Jonathan won before going ahead to win the poll.