How Jonathan ‘blackmailed’ govs to get endorsement
An insider said the president had to make his threats clear thus: “I am the captain of this boat. I am not going down alone. I am going to sink this (political) boat and go down with all that are in it,” Jonathan said. Jonathan, in an emotion-laden voice, was quoted to have told […]
An insider said the president had to make his threats clear thus: “I am the captain of this boat. I am not going down alone. I am going to sink this (political) boat and go down with all that are in it,” Jonathan said.
Jonathan, in an emotion-laden voice, was quoted to have told the governors that “you have given me assurances of support but some of you are secretly campaigning for Atiku (Abubakar, former Vice President and presidential aspirant). I can’t stand here and be humiliated by you. Everything I have asked for, you have refused to give me. No president anywhere has been treated by his party the way you are treating me.”
But the president’s attempts to hold the party primaries in Abuja rather than the states as well as have the presidential primaries before other offices, notably the governors were not successful as the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party finally relied on the extant 2010 Electoral Act which did not have the provisions that he wanted.
These are some of the details of the intrigues and drama that characterised the 55th NEC of the PDP in Abuja last Thursday; where 20 PDP state governors on the platform of the ruling party reportedly endorsed Jonathan for 2011.
The threat to sink the political boat and drown everyone including the governors may have earned the president the controversial endorsement of 20 governors of the PDP, a source told our reporter. The governors later declared in a communiqué that they “recognize the Yar’adua/Jonathan ticket and therefore hereby support and endorse President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GCFR) to contest the 2011 election as the PDP Presidential candidate for a period of four years only.”
It was after the president’s declaration that the Chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum and Kwara State governor, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki was said to have risen to the president’s rescue. The president’s face, he told the meeting, must be saved to save the party from further crisis.
This development, according to the source, brought some relief and calmed the fraying nerves of the Jonathan’s camp. Consequently, the question of whether Jonathan was willing to do a single term and go away in 2015 arose.
Thereafter, Governors Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu of Niger, Alhaji Muhammadu Danjuma Goje of Gombe, Admiral Murtala Nyako of Adamawa, Mr. Liyel Imoke of Cross River, Chief Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom, and Malam Sule Lamido of Jigawa were said to have insisted that the president should respond to whether he will serve for only one term of four years if he is endorsed. “What are we going to tell our people when they ask?” Governor Aliyu was quoted to have asked Jonathan.
An apparently disturbed Jonathan was said to have remained mute over the issue; lending credence to the raging suspicion that he wants to remain in the presidential office in the next eight years, “if that is what Nigerians want.”
It was at that point, according to our source, that the former Board of Trustees (BoT) Chairman of the party, Chief Tony Anenih came to the president’s rescue by rising to his feet and pledged that Jonathan would serve for just one term of four years. But when the question of which zone would Jonathan hand over power to after he must have served the said four year single term, both the President and Anenih kept quiet, again raising further suspicious about the president’s real motives.
But the Atiku campaign office said in a statement that “the so-called governors’ endorsement is of no significance so long as they do not take away the right of delegates to vote. We are in a democracy. Governors have a right to make a democratic choice and so do the delegates. Let there be no intimidation of delegates.”