It is widely believed that President Goodluck Jonathan will get the nomination of the Peoples Democratic Party in 2015, just as it is also believed that if the presidential election were held today, Jonathan would lose. More so, if the newly registered All Progressives Congress were to come up with a good combined ticket of President and Vice-President. True, two years is a long time in presidential electoral politics; but it is also a short time for Jonathan to reverse the general perception that his administration is nothing but a failure.
The general public is not convinced about the scorecard he recently touted for himself because his achievements have somehow been under-or mis-communicated to the public. Besides, a number of the achievements have been in elite sectors, such as airport remodelling, establishment of a Sovereign Wealth Fund, setting up of a dozen universities, N7bn to reburbish the Vice-President’s Lodge; and the purchase of additional presidential jets. These are projects that are not readily visible, known, or directly beneficial to about 70 per cent of the population, who live on $2 a day or less.
There have been no remarkable improvements in the sectors which directly impact the peoples’ lives — power supply; education, health care, and agriculture. No marked improvement on the nation’s major highways, especially in the South, except the belated award of the contract to fix the dilapidated Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. The other major arterial road in the South, the Sagamu-Benin Expressway remains a death trap, as trailers derail or overturn when their drivers suddenly manoeuvre unexpected potholes and bumps. The unnecessary loss of lives and property on the roads is complemented by the terrorist activities of Boko Haram, which keeps striking despite a state of emergency and an offer of amnesty.
Jonathan’s handling of the economy has been ambiguous at best. Armed with figures, graphs, and chats, couched in World Bank, the IMF and Goldman Sachs jargon, his economic management team has been engaged in doublespeak. In one context, they tell us the economy is growing. In another context, they express regrets about rising unemployment, ballooning domestic debt, trillions of naira lost to leakages in the petroleum sector, and the collapse of the manufacturing industry.
Against the above backgrounds, the hidden transcript behind the PDP’s decision to nominate Jonathan for a second term will be more important than his first-term performance. The hidden transcript rests on two factors. First, as the incumbent President, no other candidate in the PDP can muster the clout and resources at his disposal–the treasury, the army, the police, the party machinery, and even the electoral machinery.
Second, there are echoes within the PDP that Jonathan should be given a second chance precisely for the same reason he got there in the first place–his ethnic minority status and his roots in the Niger Delta, the bedrock of the nation’s oil resources. The argument here is not necessarily for Jonathan’s sake but for the sake of the region he represents.
As for Jonathan himself, there is a historical burden on him that will likely make him do anything to win the nomination: He would be the first democratically elected President in Nigerian history, who lost in the primary for his reelection.
Fully aware that challenges are likely to arise within his own party, given the it-is-our-turn-to-eat posture of the North and, to a lesser extent, the South-East, Jonathan has been struggling for nearly a year now to take control of his party for the express purpose of securing its nomination in 2015.
Unfortunately, however, the President’s methods have been wrong-headed and alienating to keen observers at home and abroad. Ultimately, his recent actions behind the wheel of control may harden the road to his nomination and ultimately work against his reelection. So are the actions of his party and those of his people from the South-South.
Take, for example, Jonathan’s attempts to stifle the opposition within his party, instead of mending fences. Apart from rendering the legitimate Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, Governor Chibuike Amaechi, ineffective, by endorsing a parallel faction and suspending him from the PDP, the fight has been taken to the Rivers State House of Assembly, where a small group of five attempted to remove the Speaker and suspend 15 of the 27 members supportive of Amaechi. True, loquacious Amaechi is not a saint–he exploits fault lines at the slightest opportunity–but the way the President, his wife, and the state’s Commissioner of Police, Joseph Mbu, have been “dealing with” him lately leaves much to be desired.
Jonathan also has had brushes with a number of elected governors in his party who have openly supported Amaechi by voting for him in the NGF election or visiting him after the crisis in the Rivers House of Assembly. Even the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, has been criticised by the Presidency and the PDP for what they called “romancing” the opposition, leading Tambuwal to point out that he was elected Speaker for all members of the House, regardless of their political platforms. There are also reports of a rift between Jonathan and his political benefactor, former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Finally, quite revealing is the Independent National Electoral Commission’s negative report on the election of eight of 12 members of the PDP’s National Working Committee, highlighting irregularities and contravention of the party’s constitution. Jonathan’s complicity was obvious until some members of his party went to court.
If this trend continues, Jonathan’s road to the nomination will be rough, very rough. And, if he manipulates himself to the nomination, he would have widened the rift within his party and may find some party members voting for the opposition. Jonathan may want to borrow a lesson from the United States, which provides the model for our own democracy. In virtually every case where there is a rift within the party that is left unresolved, an incumbent president is challenged in the party primary. True, the challenger often loses, but he takes the president down with him. Of the 10 American incumbent presidents in this category, beginning with John Adams (1880) and so far ending with George H. Bush (1992), two have lost their party’s nomination, with one challenger (Winfield Scott, 1852) winning and the other (James Buchanan, 1856) losing in the general election. The remaining eight who got nominated went on to lose in the general election.
If Jonathan fails to learn from the American example, he should at least be able to caution his own people from the South-South. They have nearly eroded the sentiment that attracted voters toward him in 2011, and which the PDP may want to exploit in 2015–a “shoeless” schoolboy and a minority from the oil-rich Niger Delta region. Not only have many South-South elders taken sides in the Jonathan-Amaechi rift, they’ve been telling us “there is no vacancy in Aso Rock” in 2015. A former Niger Delta militant, who now finds himself in the corridors of power, fell short of saying that Nigeria would burn, if Jonathan were not re-elected.
The President has better ways of controlling the contours of his road to victory. He should pull people together, not push them away or apart. He needs to reconcile with Amaechi and the PDP governors who voted for him in the NGF election. He needs to respect the sanctity of that election. He needs to caution his people from the South-South. Finally, he needs to caution his wife, who is widely believed to have ignited, or at least aggravated, the conflict between him and Amaechi.
There are indications that Jonathan has begun consultations and reconciliation. Let’s hope it is not too late.
