By Chuks OLUIGBO, Odinaka ANUDU, and Chukwudi OHIRI
In The Beginning
Before the 2011 presidential election in Nigeria, many Nigerians had come to regard Dr Goodluck Ebelemi Jonathan, a man who has been described as possessing an endearing calmness, a modesty that is rare with Nigeria’s ‘Big Men’, and a seemingly sincere desire to engage with the people he is ruling, as the Biblical Joshua sent to Nigeria from heaven to salvage the country from the pangs of penury, hunger, economic and political doldrums, and from the purl hands of inept leaders. Following the pattern of his ascendancy from assistant director, Environmental Protection and Pollution Control at the Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission, OMPADEC, in Port Harcourt in 1998 where he was “earning small, small kobo that kept him going”, to deputy governor and then governor of the oil-rich Bayelsa, vice-president, acting president, and finally president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, without contesting any election on his own, many Romantic tales came to be woven around the man Goodluck. Thus, even before he declared his intention to run for presidency some months before April 2011, after many months of taciturnity, not a few felt that Jonathan was going to have a landslide victory.
 |
| Goodluck Jonathan |
And the Otueke, Bayelsa State-born zoologist did win the presidency, despite the tough battle and almost irrepressible show of tensile strength between him and his arch-rival, Muhammadu Buhari of the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, garnering a total of 6,118,608 votes in the South-South, his home zone, as against Buhari’s 49,978 votes; 2,786,417 votes in the South-West as against 321,609 votes given to Buhari; 4,985,246 votes in the South-East as against 90,335 votes given to all other political parties put together; and 3,123,126 votes in the North-Central as against 1,999,999 shared by all the other parties. However, Buhari carried the day in the North-West and the North-East geo-political zones, with 6,453,437 and 3,648,736 as against Jonathan’s 3,395,724 and 1,808,805, respectively.
Prior to the election, virtually all the key contenders for Nigeria’s number one position had given their word that they would run for a single term of four years. Gen Ibrahim Babangida, Gen Muhammadu Buhari, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, and Dr Goodluck Jonathan all made the same commitment. Babangida was specifically quoted as saying that he would run the office of president, if voted in, for only four years and then work towards the emergence of a South-Easterner to succeed him in 2015. His words: “My belief in zoning informed my desire to seek for one term so that we can allow other parts of the country to have a fair share in the presidency.”
On his part, President Jonathan, while addressing Nigerians living in Ethiopia, where he attended an African Union summit, was reported to have pledged to stand for only one term. While answering to questions as to why Nigerians in the Diaspora would not be allowed to vote in the elections, he said: “Presently, the law does not allow voting outside Nigeria, but I will work towards it by 2015, even though I will not be running for election.” The President was also quoted as saying: “If I’m voted into power within the next four years, the issue of power will become a thing of the past. Four years is enough for anyone in power to make significant improvement and if I can’t improve on power within this period, it then means I cannot do anything even if I am there for the next four years.”
But even then, while many believed that the president would honour his word, some discerning Nigerians had reasons to doubt the president’s commitment to his single term pledge. Key among these was the president of the Civil Rights Congress, CRC, Mallam Shehu Sani, who said that President Jonathan had carved a niche for himself as someone who breaks a gentleman’s agreement and doesn’t honour his words. In his words: “President Jonathan lacks the honour and integrity to be trusted for his word. His offer for a four-year-single-term is a political gimmick and enticement. It is a political deception and skulduggery aimed at neutralising the opposition within his party.” Citing what he termed the president’s ‘summersault over zoning and rotational agreement’ of the PDP as some of the reasons why Nigerians wouldn’t trust Jonathan, Sani said: “President Goodluck Jonathan on rotation of power or zoning exposed his perfidy and vitiates any modicum of honour in his word. Whoever chooses to believe Jonathan is to be a perpetual fool. A people led by a leader whose word is not his bond are in bondage.”
Also, people in other camps, especially supporters of Atiku Abubakar, Jonathan’s key opponent in the PDP primaries, had reasons to doubt the president. Mallam Garba Shehu, spokesperson of the Atiku Campaign Organisation, said in an interview: “To unravel the essential President Goodluck Jonathan, one may need to go back to December 2002. On that day, Jonathan who was then Deputy Governor of Bayelsa State, was in attendance at a national caucus meeting of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, by default. For whatever reason, his boss, Chief Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, was not available for that meeting and had delegated him to represent him. That coincidence appears to have been a fortuitous one. It was at that meeting that the rotation of power between the North and South of the country was affirmed. Jonathan was the 35th signatory on the resolution of that meeting reaffirming the rotation of power between the two regions. It was expected that following the expiration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s tenure on May 29, 2007, power would return to the North and reside there for eight years. It did with the ascendance of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. However, with the demise of Yar’Adua after a protracted illness on May 5, 2010, Jonathan was thrown up as an ‘accidental president,’ thus setting the stage for a titanic battle between Jonathan who is committed to running in 2011, in negation of that PDP pact and the North. Reading between the lines from what transpired at that last NEC meeting where Jonathan was endorsed, it was clear that the president has refused to answer the two fundamental questions: Is he ready to serve a single term? Again, which region will he hand over power to after serving the single term? We don’t need a clairvoyant to know the mindset of the president on these issues.”
Yet many Nigerians, perhaps carried away by their love for the person of Jonathan, dismissed these fears as borne out of malice. The elections came and they voted massively for the man whom they have come to love.
The President Double-speaks
Then came May 26, 2011, the day of the pre-inauguration lecture delivered by Prof Ladipo Adamolekun with the theme, “A Transformational Agenda for Accelerated National Development”, and President Jonathan, through his utterances, rattled not a few Nigerians when he lent credence to the fears that he may not be held by his word.
In his response after the lecture, just two days to his swearing-in and that of the newly elected/re-elected state governors across 26 states of the federation, the President said that four years was not enough for a president or a governor to embark on any meaningful programme. “I will not talk about the president and the vice president because the Constitution says four years, though some people have said four years are too short to make meaningful change. I believe them. For instance, if a new person is elected as a governor today, it takes him one year or one and half years to stabilize and also know members of his team. That is why in most cases, after one year or one and half years, a president or governor dissolves his cabinet and then sits down to get people to really work with him. By the time he settles down, another election comes and he gets busy on how to win the election. This is a constitutional problem,” he said.
As if to support Jonathan’s statement, on May 28, 2011, former Secretary-General of The Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, while presenting the 3rd Eminent Persons’ Lecture at Bells University of Technology, Ota, Ogun State, titled “Nigeria in a Globalizing World”, said that left to him, he would amend Nigeria’s constitution to give the president a single term of six years and the governors a single term of five years.
The president’s statement immediately elicited reactions among prominent Nigerians. While some analysts saw it as an indication that he might try to influence or lobby the legislature to amend the Constitution to extend his tenure to five or six years, others simply felt that the President was already giving prior excuses for the failure of his administration, while yet a third group saw it as a clear signal that the man is already working towards his re-election in 2015. By so doing, Dr Jonathan was already acting like his counterpart in South Africa, Jacob Zuma, whom recent reports quoted as denying ever promising to serve only one term as ANC president at the party’s elective conference four years ago, whereas earlier reports quoting senior party sources at the time of the conference held at Polokwane claimed Zuma had made a commitment to serve only one term.
In a similar vein, Anyaoku’s statement also fuelled the rumours already making the rounds that the president’s men are planning to push for a constitutional amendment to enforce a seven-year single term for both the president and the governors.
Rudolph Okonkwo of “Correct Me If I’m Wrong” fame wrote that “On the surface and at your own risk, Emeka Anyaoku’s suggestion was an innocent deduction of an astute observer of Nigeria. But coming just days after President Jonathan stated that four years is not enough to transform Nigeria, we can assume that a discrete campaign to extend Jonathan’s term in office is already on.”
Four Years Not Enough?
In an article entitled “The speech Jonathan shouldn’t have made”, Reuben Abati, a renowned public affairs analyst, debunked the president’s claim that four years are not enough, thus: “In states where the governors are prepared, we have seen so much done in four years. Gbenga Daniel, Bola Tinubu, Babatunde Fashola, Rotimi Amaechi, Emmanuel Uduaghan, Bukola Saraki, Mohammed Goje, Adamu Aliero, Godwin Akpabio, serving and former governors, all cannot complain that four years is ‘too short’ because in their first four years, they made great impressions and strides. It is in fact when governors stay too long in office that they begin to fail. Promises that a governor or president needs a second or third term to make an impact have not been borne out by our experience. President Barack Obama definitely would not say that ‘four years is too short.’ In less than four years, his administration has shown such purposefulness that comes from the will to lead. Obasanjo as President did a lot more in his first term of four years whereas his second term was taken up by his ‘bolekaja’ fight with Vice President Atiku Abubakar, and the selfish politics of tenure extension. General Murtala Muhammed spent 200 days in office as Nigerian Head of State and yet he made a lot of difference. Libya’s Gaddafi has been in power for 41 years and he says the period is ‘too short’. Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, 31 years in power, also insists that this is ‘too short’.”
Abati further stated that if any elected officer should need time to settle down, it shouldn’t be President Jonathan. “He cannot ask for the luxury of settling down after spending four years in office as Vice President, Acting President, with the last one year as President. Nigerians don’t want him to settle down; they want results. That is why they voted for him,” he said. He therefore advised the president to avoid all the shortcomings that would make it possible for four years to be too short, since “any sign of tardiness on the part of his administration can be rightly interpreted as an attempt to justify an extension of his tenure.”
True, it must not take eternity for any goal-oriented and focused leader to leave memorable footprints on the sands of time. Nelson Mandela of South Africa who is today referred to as a ‘living legend’, for instance, did not spend more than a single four-year term to bow out honorably. Although it could be argued that he earned much of his political marks during the apartheid struggle, yet he did not yield to the temptation of clinging on to power, sweet as it may appear. Within four years in office, he had achieved the reunification of South Africa with the instrumentality of the ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’. The greatest challenge of South Africa at the time was the shortage of housing for the poor, and slum townships which continued to blight major cities. Mandela did his utmost best to solve the problem. While leaving the day-to-day running of the government to Thabo Mbeki, he worked assiduously towards building a new international image for South Africa.
Back home, General Murtala Mohammed was the Military Head of State of Nigeria between July 29, 1975 and February 13, 1976. It is on record that within this short period of time, he had embarked on far reaching reforms in the country and his policies won him broad popular support, while his decisiveness elevated him to the status of a ‘folk hero’. In a very short while, Murtala Mohammad sought to restore public confidence in not only the federal government, but also in the civil service, judiciary, police and armed forces, diplomatic service, public corporations, and even the universities. Some officials were brought to trial on charges of corruption. He equally initiated a comprehensive review of the Third National Development Plan with special emphasis on stemming the tide of inflation as the greatest danger to the economy. Even the foreign policy of Nigeria received positive touch within this short period.
Also, within a record four years, the late Sam Onunaka Mbakwe of Imo State left a record that has today become a benchmark for measuring the performance of successive governments in the state. Between 1979 and 1984 when the military regime of Gen. Buhari disrupted the Second Republic, Mbakwe had transformed Imo and commenced a process of industrialization of the state. He saw governance as a tool for the rehabilitation of the infrastructure destroyed during the civil war and tackled it headlong. He established the multi-campus Imo State University which transmuted to Abia State University, one of the best campuses east of the Niger. The defunct Progress Bank was his brain child and he also invested heavily in palm produce and poultry to earn the Imo people huge revenue. His greatest landmarks were recorded in the development of infrastructure. Before him, roads in the area were in a terrible state of disrepair. By his third year in office, Aba, Umuahia, Okigwe, Orlu and Afikpo could boast of modern roads. Till today, it is difficult to out-match Mbakwe's legacy either in road rehabilitation or rural electrification. It was with the same zest that he turned to industrialisation by establishing an aluminum smelter company, a resin and paint factory, a cardboard packaging industry, flour mills, and a glass industry. His plan to prepare the state for industrial take off did not regrettably outlive his tenure. Mbakwe spent only about four years in office and achieved so much.
Away from the distant past, Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola did not have to spend donkey years before transforming Lagos State, a record that is still glaringly obvious. Before his coming, nobody could imagine that the face of Lagos could be easily transformed ‘overnight’, but he achieved the better part of what gave him a clean bill of health just within the first three years in office while the last one year was devoted to fighting detractors in the State Assembly. Today, Fashola has become a veritable symbol of good governance and a role model for other governors with only four years on. Why then would President Jonathan say that four years is not enough?
The South-East And 2015
Meanwhile, against the backdrop of President Jonathan’s earlier promise to rule Nigeria for a single term of four years and his recent statement that “four years is not enough”, which is an indication that he would either try to extend his tenure through amendment of the constitution or by presenting himself for re-election in 2015, what is the fate of the South-East geopolitical in 2015?
Many who believe that the South-East still has bright prospects in 2015, even if President Jonathan decides to contest, are of the opinion that if the likes of Nwadike Chikezie of the Peoples Mandate Party, PMP, Lawson Igboanugo Aroh of the Peoples Progressive Party, PPP, Peter Nwangwu of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, and Iheanyichukwu Nnaji of Better Nigeria Progressive Party, BNPP, could secure 6th to 9th positions respectively in the last presidential elections in spite of their unpopularity in the South-East, a person from the region can win the presidency. Once the candidate is credible, famous and has unquestionable integrity and impeccable track record of service, he can be supported by the majority in the region, since the region is now beginning to come to grips with realities of the time.
The South-East region, which has cried of marginalization since the end of the Nigerian Civil War, believes that the rest of Nigeria should support them to produce a president for Nigeria in 2015. Apart from Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe who was a mere ceremonial Governor-General, and Aguiyi-Ironsi who ruled Nigeria for barely five months, no other person from the zone has had a shot at the presidency.
During his electioneering campaigns in the South-East, Dr Jonathan was said to have told the leaders of the Igbo socio-cultural group, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, that he would do only one term of four years, but whether there was any agreement that he would hand over to a South-Easterner in 2015 is another question. But the zone had gone ahead to throw the whole weight of their support behind Jonathan, with their eye on 2015, recording 25 percent of the total votes cast for the president.
According to Prince Onyinye Chilaka, a Rivers State-based public affairs commentator, Jonathan got exceptional support from the South-East because people of the zone felt it was their turn to rule the country but decided to support Jonathan because they felt he was one of their own and that he could give them a chance in 2015. But he was quick to point out that the South-East was not the only region that gave Jonathan massive votes. On the issue of agreement with the president over 2015, however, Chilaka said that the South-West, the North-Central or any other zone for that matter could also have had one agreement or the other with President Jonathan.
Informed opinions in the North-Central region also affirm that the support of the South-East region for Jonathan was predicated upon the fact that they needed to support someone who had a close affinity with them and can guarantee their dream of presidency in 2015. They also affirm that because the South-West, represented by Olusegun Obasanjo, has had a shot at the presidency between 1999 and 2007, the North-Central, represented by Babangida, and the North-West represented by Buhari and Yar’Adua, have all occupied the seat in recent times, it is most reasonable that Jonathan should give way in 2015 for the people of the South-East to take their rightful position.
But some prominent citizens of the South-East who spoke to us saw the president’s utterance as it affects 2015 from a different perspective. Former Speaker of Anambra State House of Assembly, Dr K.C, Enemuo, was of the opinion that the question of who emerges as president in 2015 should be left in the hands of God. According to him, “What we are seeing in politics today shows that anything can happen. A person from the South-East can become president in 2015. But let’s not speculate. For now, let us believe that though Jonathan is a South-South person, he is the president of Nigeria now.”
For Chief Joseph Amaechi Obidike, the chairman of Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, in Anambra State, constitutionally, nothing stops Jonathan from contesting in 2015. But he was quick to point out that a South-Easterner could emerge in PDP, and can also emerge in other parties. Hence South-Easterners have strong men that can contest in 2015.
Speaking too, Barr John Oguejiofor, President-General of Abatete, Anambra State, averred that even if Jonathan decides to contest in 2015, any qualified South-Easterner could move into another party. In his words, “Revolution is taking place now. If Jonathan does not do well, he should know that he will be voted out in 2015 if he chooses to contest. Even if he decides to contest, a credible South-Easterner can move into the field to challenge him, especially if he does not do well.”
A top leader of an Igbo group who spoke on the condition of anonymity said, “Nigerians are impatient with Jonathan. If he does not tackle numberless problems in the country, he may end up being booted out in 2015. He may contest, but I believe that the best thing for him to do is to thank his God and support a South-Easterner in 2015. Otherwise, he may get his greatest challenge from here. Don’t forget that the North-East, the North-West are all there.”
Last Word For Mr President
As Reuben Abati rightly pointed out, Nigerians expect that Dr Jonathan as President must run the business of governance in an unusual manner, dismantle the status quo, and bring fresh energy and initiative to the office, if possible act like a revolutionary militant in search of a new order. Turning around to say that four years are not enough to make any impact shows that he does not really appreciate the people’s deep yearning for change, or that he has not been listening to them.
The issue of amendment of the Constitution to accommodate an extension of the tenure of presidents and governors may be debatable someday, but even if it were to be amended within between now and 2015, it cannot take retroactive effect, otherwise President Jonathan would be accused of subversion and he would have damaged the historic opportunities of his government.
Whatever he does, President Jonathan must know that Nigerians will not accept tenure elongation for an excuse, nor would they hand him a second tenure on a platter of gold. Clearly, the yardsticks for 2015 would be impeccable records of integrity and performance. If Jonathan does not tackle the problems in the power, petroleum, agricultural, and industrial sectors, if he fails to tackle poverty, the current sentiments and love people have for him may not linger, and he should think less of contesting in 2015. If, on the other hand, as Ochereome Nnanna wrote, he is able “to fix our power supply woes, give us a ‘people’s constitution’ as he promised, where power would be devolved to enable the people assume direct control over their affairs in their respective localities, address the inadequacies in our educational, health, security and infrastructural sectors as well as improve the economy with more of our people gainfully employed, Nigerians may not allow him to go after only one term.”
No comments:
Post a Comment