Suspending debate on the blunder

In any case, while we continue to dissect the meaning of the president’s actions over the October 1st bomb blast, it is important that some very vexed issues in the polity also require attention.Now that the government is doing everything within its powers to frustrate the emergence of a consensus candidate among the PDP aspirants […]

In any case, while we continue to dissect the meaning of the president’s actions over the October 1st bomb blast, it is important that some very vexed issues in the polity also require attention.
Now that the government is doing everything within its powers to frustrate the emergence of a consensus candidate among the PDP aspirants from the North, it is critical that the candidates themselves work to resolve this obvious political weakness.
If zoning is abrogated just as it is in the PDP as a party that claims to be the largest, but certainly the most insensitive political party in Africa, it is important that the North as the undoubted senior player in the Nigerian federation must assert the potency of numbers as an ingredient in any genuine political contest. The majority must always continue to have their way while the minority will retain the right to have their say.
I want Goodluck Jonathan to go to primaries with even a weak candidate from the North so that we see the end of sycophancy, belligerence and deceit. The President will be roundly defeated. He will then understand the meaning of decency and decorum as currently under display by the various political forces in the country including the majority of our governors.
The centre piece of discourse this weekend is on the need to make the various contenders of the PDP ticket from the North to come together and understand the immediate and long term implications of a possibly rowdy primaries which may give Goodluck Jonathan and his group an edge. What Nigerians are asking for this time around is credible elections and the route to achieving it, I believe Muhammad Haruna, looks very slim. The treason is clear, the blindfolded ambition of the president to stay put at no matter what cost.
My father, the Director General of the Goodluck campaign organization, Dr Dalhatu Tafida did say in the course of the week that there is no price that is too much to be paid for the ambition of the President to hold on to power after 2011. The implicit meaning of what the campaign director is saying is, when put another way, a form of restating their godfather’s philosophy of politics as a do-or-die affair. I am not worried about all such ranting. I am only worried that the political forces that are likely to deal a deadly blow on recklessness might stand divided just for the sake of sheer personal interest, against the nation and the evolution of veritable institution capable of propelling the much desired growth and development.
I think it is important that all hands are on deck to pressurize these aspirants for the PDP ticket from the North to bury their ambitions and reflect on the reality of the current political configuration in the country for the sake of peace and prosperity. It is not about anyone being the best or most suitable but a challenge that is coming from a very junior partner in the nation’s federal arrangement and deploying the power of the State and its resources to force irregularity down the throat of the rest of us. There is a conspiracy of silence from the other two major groups in the alliance. While the South west is playing the politics of safety by staying away from the muscle flexing between the majority North and a fraction of the South South as represented by Goodluck Jonathan’s ambition, the South East is buried in the ensuing political confusion and it is apparently failing to take any stand on the issue of either zoning or otherwise.
It is true that the Ibos need to be president in Nigeria, but I do not see that possibility in the near future because there is growing disarray within the Ibo political establishment. There is the failure to accept the PDP’s idea of zoning on the basis of North-South divide. They are introducing new concept that rotation is based on geo-political zones and not regions. This is a new arithmetic which I think the more intelligent Ibo nation must recalculate if their ambition of becoming a president of Nigeria in the near future is to be realized.
The reason is clear. Even if elections both in the PDP and the country are not properly held in 2011 and, God forbid, should Goodluck Jonathan by commission or omission finds himself in office after the 2011 polls, it is impossible to have power remain in the southern region after he might have left. This is just a hypothesis because I do not see how Jonathan’s incapacity would go beyond the 2011 elections.
When people say the ambition of the current president is detrimental to national political peace and harmony more so because the PDP has either legally or illegally dominated the entire political space in the country, it is not an over exaggeration but a statement of reality. This over ambition constitutes the scientific data which those who see a short future for Nigeria have thoroughly analyzed and arrived at their conclusions.
It appears that those who call the shots in the country today are careless about the future of Nigeria. Why public service is at its lowest ebb in our society is because of the radical change of focus and purpose. Selfishness. The self before any other person or anything else. A society that thrives in such confusion is not likely to make any meaningful progress in its attempt to develop. This piece is of the view that there is the strong need to give Jonathan a good run for his money. The implication is several. It will straighten the principle of population as the major tool of representation. It will also help cut down to size the inordinate ambitions of opportunists in politics as well as save the country the possibilities of any major crack that could cause us this very dear but eclectic alliance.
My take is that all the four other aspirants under the PDP must come  to a common understanding so that they go to the party’s convention with a united force in order to beat the president and his men. There is no way any two of them can go on contest and expect to defeat the president in view of the colossal national wealth at his disposal as well as paraphernalia of office which are being deployed to serve his ambition. It is not easy facing an incumbent in a third world election. The National Assembly has done a very good work in the rejection of electoral bill amendment sent to it by the president. The sole aim of the amendment is to give the president some undemocratic advantage at the election convention with almost half the total number of delegates as his political appointees. This was the case with the PDP and the problem is that it denies the opponents of incumbents the necessary level playing ground for contest.
The only loose end in the bill which should have been tightened more was the need to exclude party officials at every level from serving as delegates for election in congresses and convections. Members of the National Working Committees, state committees and local government as well as ward executives are suppose to be impartial umpires on matters of selecting candidates who will fly the flags of their parties.  If they have the power to vote, the implication is that they all will lie behind the incumbent and that is a serious disadvantage to other aspirants. In any case, this is the first time that we are attaining this level as far as the electoral law is concerned. I will like to encourage the legislature to tighten all such loose ends when the 2014 Electoral Act is being crafted. Meanwhile, let’s make do with the law the way it is now.