Prologue: A Dove Among Hawks

Fri, May 24, 2013
By publisher
5 MIN READ

Special Democracy Edition

By Mike Akpan  |

PRESIDENT Goodluck Ebele Jonathan is not a stranger to political storms. From the outset, his emergence as deputy to ailing President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, who later died on May 5, 2010, raised suspicion in the northern political circle. First, his nomination as the running mate to Yar’Adua, which defied all political permutations, was seen as part of a grand plan by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, to retain the presidency in the south beyond eight years, since his third term agenda had failed. The thinking then was that Obasanjo was privy to the security report on Yar’Adua’s health problem and knew that he would not live long to complete the first four years of his presidency because he was suffering from a terminal disease. So, there was a conscious plan by the northern political hierarchy to frustrate Jonathan and whittle his influence in the Yar’Adua presidency. Before Yar’Adua died, a cabal led by Turai, his wife, had emerged as the kitchen cabinet and taken over the running of the presidency. By this development, Jonathan was kept at bay from interfering in the running of the central government even though he was the number two man in that administration. In other words, he was only a passenger in the outer cabinet.

Things got to a head when the president’s health deteriorated and he had to be flown out for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia in November 2009. As the vice-president, Jonathan was never informed of the president’s planned medical trip and how long it would last. In fact, his absence from the country lasted more than the period stipulated by the constitution. In his absence, the government was run by the cabal which effectively blocked any move by the president to transmit a letter to the National Assembly or the adoption of a resolution by his cabinet to the effect that he was incapacitated from continuing as president, on the basis of which Jonathan would have been made the acting president. During this period, the country was at a stand-still because there was no constitutionally recognised leader. It took the pressure of various interest groups, ostensibly, the Save Nigeria Group, SNG, for the Senate to invoke the doctrine of necessity, in the absence of the above stipulations, to make Jonathan, the acting president. He subsequently became the president after the death of Yar’Adua. As president, his first major decision was the dissolution of the cabinet he inherited from Yar’Adua in order to do away with the cabal and take full control of his government. Another major decision he took was to continue with the electoral reform process started by his predecessor by the appointment of Attahiru Jega, professor of political science, as chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and giving him a free hand to organise credible and acceptable elections in Nigeria.

Jonathan’s next political storm raged in 2010. It bordered on his ambition to continue as president after serving out Yar’Adua’s four-year term. The northern establishment wanted their son to serve out Yar’Adua’s second four-year term. This clashed with Jonathan’s 2011 presidential ambition which also clashed with the zoning arrangement in the PDP. With a combination of guts and political dexterity, Jonathan got the PDP ticket for the 2011 presidential election. He went on to win the election. Those who campaigned that the PDP presidential ticket should go to the north on the basis of zoning but lost had vowed that they would make the country ungovernable for him. That was not all. Another threat of making the country ungovernable if the 2011 presidential election was rigged, came from the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, whose candidate had repeatedly accused the PDP of rigging the election before and after the contest. It is, therefore, understandable why many Nigerians particularly from the south, linked the violence which started immediately after the announcement of the presidential election result, and which had developed into full blown insurgency by the Boko Haram sect, with the earlier threats.

At first, President Jonathan did not know how to react to the security challenges posed by the insurgency and had no clear policy on how to deal with it until lately when he decided to declare a state of emergency in three northern states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa and ordered a decisive military operation to protect the territorial integrity of Nigeria. In effect, the last two years of his presidency can be justifiably described as stormy. The storm has become even fiercer following his body language which signifies his interest in the 2015 presidential contest even though he insists that he is still consulting widely. But the pertinent questions Nigerians will be asking as they celebrate this year’s Democracy Day this week are: How has his two-year presidency fared in spite of the serious security challenges? Does he really deserve a second term in office? The answers to these questions are better left for the voters to decide come 2015.

— Jun. 3, 2013 @ 01:00 GMT

Tags:

20 thoughts on "Prologue: A Dove Among Hawks"