*Loyalty at all cost is order of the day
*Ministers manouvre for positioning
*Jonathan, Sambo, embarrassed
The Executive Council of the Federation, EXCOF, meeting almost became a rowdy session. And the rowdiness majorly had to do with how to prove absolute loyalty to Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, President and Commander-in-Chief and Nigeria’s man of the moment calling the shots. Jonathan has in his hands the physical destiny of over 157million Nigerians.
Mind you, that is the destiny of about 2.5% of world population. This is massive.
Last Wednesday’s meeting, chaired by Vice President Namadi Sambo, had a ting of drama. One of the two women in the council who can claim to read the mind of President Jonathan went ballistic in her presentation – there are a few women in the EXCOF but two women stand out as alter-egos of Mr. President.
One is Petroleum Resources Minister, Diezani Allison-Madueke; the other is Stella Odua-Ogiemwonyi; and both were made women before joining Jonathan’s cabinet. Last Wednesday, it was the latter that raised a point of order at the EXCOF meeting over what Sunday Vanguard gathered was an anticipatory approval on an agric project. Sunday Vanguard was reliably informed by one of the ministers in attendance that the matter had been brought up again for further discussion and inputs from ministers.
But during discussions, the minister in question objected to the propriety of the matter being discussed in the absence of President Jonathan. She reportedly insisted that discussing and attempting to come to a resolution on the agric project was not meet and proper because President Jonathan was not the one chairing the meeting.
Sunday Vanguard was informed that her objection caused a mild stir. Some other ministers in the know of the real essence of the project and the level of procedural correctness of Wednesday’s debate at the EXCOF could not understand the virulence of Madam Stella who is the Aviation Minister.
A few of the ministers saw reason in her position but Sunday Vanguard was made to understand that the preponderance of opinion suggested that whatever was happening at that EXCOF meeting was not intended to and could not amount to any form of erosion of the position, prestige and seeming pre-eminence of President Jonathan because his position as President and Commander-in-Chief remained unassailable.
In fact, according to Sunday Vanguard investigations, the agric project in question had received the tacit endorsement of President Jonathan. However, according to a minister, “typical of what President Jonathan does at EXCOF meetings, he allows ministers to debate issues so that we can arrive at resolutions that are well thought out and with the full benefit of all shades of argument”.
Sunday Vanguard learnt that she “was almost shouted down because what she attempted to do amounted to an attempt to be holier than thou”.
The drama last Wednesday represents just one in a series of attempts by ministers and appointees in the Jonathan administration to position themselves as very loyal men and women. Sensing that President Jonathan would likely contest the 2015 presidential elections, especially judging by his body language, most appointees are jostling to position one another as Mr. President’s favourite.
But President Jonathan has not helped matters.
Take, for instance, the issue of his party, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.
After President Jonathan’s insistence and concomitant victory that the outgone governor of his Bayelsa State, Timpreye Sylva, would not be presented for the 2012 governorship election in the state, party faithful have come to realize the enormous powers of Mr. President. And advancing his course further, the President penultimate Saturday successfully installed a new national chairman for his PDP.
Interestingly, it was President Jonathan who drew the attention of party members to the 2015 presidential election and succession issue.
According to Jonathan in his speech at the convention, “We must eschew bickering and remain united in the pursuit of our goals. As members of a great party, we must resist the temptation to allow inordinate ambition and what appears to be a growing obsession with the politics of succession in 2015, to cause disaffection within our ranks”. The speech was delivered on his behalf by Vice President Sambo.
Mind you, the same Jonathan advised party leaders at the 58th NEC meeting of his party that they should stop the imposition of candidates.
File
photo: From Left, President Jonathan, Ag Chairman, Alhaji Abubakar
Baraje, Bot Chairman, Chief Obasanjo and Chief of Staff to the
President, Chief Ogiadomhe at the PDP convention
Specifically, Isa Yuguda of Bauchi State and Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State had visited the president inside Aso Rock Presidential Villa. Their mission had only one principal objective – to feel the President’s pulse, read his body language and come to terms with his choice on who would become national chairman of the PDP.
At that meeting, President Jonathan, whom Lai Mohammed of the Action Congress of Nigeria, AC N, described as “fast becoming an imperial overlord”, sent for Alhaji Bamangar Tukur. He made it known to the governors that his choice for the position of national chairman is Tukur. He went into the homily of why Tukur’s experience, reach, maturity and political savvy would go a long way to build a PDP of “our dreams”.
It was after that meeting that the magic of Bauchi happened, where at the zonal congress of the party one Musa Babayo, acting national secretary of the party, trounced Tukur.
But because in PDP, party supremacy as they know it prevails, all contestants against Tukur, including Babayo, stepped down on convention day.
In fact, a collateral damage was to occur and which would have sullied the relationship between President Jonathan and Sambo.
The cordiality which existed between Sambo and Babayo on account of their headship of the PDP Building Committee, where the former serves as chairman and the latter as operating officer for the project, was to be insinuated into the realm of possible sponsorship of the latter for the PDP chairmanship. But checks have since revealed that the building project for the party is going on well When Sunday Vanguard visited the site in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja, work had gone very far – it was this cordiality that some mischief makers interpreted as a Sambo/Babayo show in Bauchi. This was wit a view to creating a chasm between Jonathan and his deputy, it was gathered.
Upon further investigations, Sunday Vanguard discovered that the famed poisoning of the political space between former President Olusegun Obasanjo and his deputy, Atiku Abubakar, started in like manner. With the publicity given the Mandela Option, the vindictiveness of Obasanjo and the sometimes miscalculating positioning of Atiku, all conspired to lead to the war of attrition between both men.
For a battle that started in late 2001, a battle which robbed Obasanjo of his wishes and which also made Atiku suffer huge political losses largely on account of victimization, both men today can not in any way count their blessings from their battles. Perhaps, Atiku’s insistence on scuttling Obasanjo’s many acts of arbitrariness using the courts - which served to deepen Nigeria’s democracy – may be counted for Atiku’s gains. But in political terms, he was denied the presidency and Obasanjo himself has become just a passing member of the party – ecen as he glories in his chairmanship of the Board of Trustees, BoT.
Back to 2015!
Today, Sunday Vanguard has discovered that the contest for the 2015 election has started with the election of Tukur. However, President Jonathan would have to contend with the gang of sycophants, political jobbers, kith and kin who see in his presidency their own opportunity to make good. How he manages their desperation would be a testament to his own level of wisdom and readiness to confront contemporary political realities.
As for Vice President Sambo, his loyalty to Jonathan continues to draw the ire of some political leaders from the North.
In an interview with Dr. Junaid Mohammed, Second Republic member of the House of Representatives, Sunday Vanguard was told that whatever business is going on between President Jonathan and his deputy is their own cup of tea.
Mohammed, who is the face of the Coalition of Northern Leaders, told Sunday Vanguard that “Vice President Sambo has demonstrated a lack of understanding of the plight of the North; the Vice President does not have the interest of the North at heart at all. If PDP governors from the North were rubbished by President Jonathan as evidenced by what happened at their convention, that is their problem; I have no sympathies for them at all because PDP is the problem of Nigeria.
The PDP and President Jonathan have created a regime of injustice and the only way out of this is for the PDP to be destroyed. So if they are talking about 2015 creating crisis in their ranks, good for the country because PDP must be destroyed for Nigeria to survive. The North was denied its rightful place”.
However, it would not be their problem alone but that of Nigerians as they would be made to suffer the collateral damage of the politics of 2015. This is because since 1999 when civil rule returned, the selfsame politics that continues to consume political leaders one after the other has also been denying the people the needed development.
For instance, the railway system has not improved much from how it was in 1999; power supply has returned to the less than 3000 megawatts it was then. Though the macro economic indices appear encouraging, poverty continues to grow because the encouragement in the indices is in the wrong direction, creating few millionaires and billionaires in a few sectors that do not generate massive employment.
Had Nigeria’s potentials been properly harnessed, perhaps, it may have become a member of BRICS (could have been named BRINCS, with the inclusion of Nigeria as the ‘N’)
BRICS represent the countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
Is President Jonathan unaware of BRICS? The President flew to Seoul, South Korea, for a Nuclear Summit. These five nations’ leaders, though present at the Nuclear Summit too, were quick to assemble in Delhi for their own progressive summit immediately after.
Trade among them has gone up by 28% over the last 10years
About 42% of global business and economies worth tens of trillions of dollars (about $85trillion) is theirs.
In the area of economic growth, here are the figures:
China 9.2%
India 7.8%
Russia 4.4%
South Africa 3.4%
Brazil, 2.7%
While USA with the worlds biggest economy stands at 1.5%, Nigeria’s growth projections can not be trusted because of the way governance is structured as well as the peculiar growth as claimed by government but which grows the number of the unemployed and those under the poverty belt.
Mercifully, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Finance Minister and head of the economic management team has been showing signs of goodness. But should she clinch the plum job of the World Bank, Nigeria may lose again.
As President Jonathan grapples with governance issues, he would go very far if he eschews petty politicking and tames the growing number of sycophants domiciled in and around Aso Rock Presidential Villa. With his imposition of Tukur penultimate Saturday, President Jonathan has himself set the succession crisis in motion. Welcome 2015 on the invitation of Mr. President
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