Jonathan’s Historic Goodluck

Goodluck Jonathan

Vice President Goodluck Jonathan is at the threshold of history as he prepares to inherit President Umaru Yar’Adua’s remaning tenure, forcing the cabals to beat a retreat
By Chidiebere Onyemaizu
Tuesday, January 19, 2010 the Aso Rock Presidential Villa, Abuja was agog. And behind
the closed doors of the federal seat of power was a busy man, Vice President Goodluck Jonathan. He was locked in a meeting, not that of the Federal Executive Council (FEC), but with a segment of Nigeria’s power brokers.
At the meeting were National Chairman of the People's Democratic Party (PDP), Vincent Ogbulafor; Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Yayale Ahmed; Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Mike Aondoaka; Governor Bukola Saraki of Kwara State, Senate President, David Mark, his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole.
The meeting, The Source can authoritatively reveal, largely dwelt on the President Umaru Yar’Adua health debacle and the inevitability of a Jonathan presidency. That meeting, as it were, was only an addition to the series of parleys that have been held of recent on the issue.
The absence of Yar’Adua from the country and from his duty post for over two months now, The Source was told, has become a serious pain in the necks of his handlers. “Having now run out of fresh ideas and dummies to sell as to how to continue to hoodwink Nigerians to the effect that the ailing president would soon return to his job, the reality and inevitability of a Jonathan presidency has finally dawned on the cabal,” an Aso Rock insider told The Source.
The Senate, last week, further abbreviated the cabals’ plots to continue to sustain the power vacuum in the country occasioned by the president's long absence. The Upper Legislative Chamber, in a unanimous resolution on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 called on the ailing President to transfer power to Jonathan in adherence to the constitution.
This, they asked him to do by complying with section 145 of the constitution, which compels him to handover to the Vice President and transmit a letter to that effect. The Source, gathered that the Senate resolution was just one out of series of steps to be taken by the Upper Chamber of the National Assembly to end the political impasse.
The Senate’s resolution coincided with the Federal Executive Council’s insistence that Yar’Adua was not incapacitated and still capable of performing his duties as president. But analysts say that the Senate position has completely rubbished the FEC claim.
The series of nocturnal meetings involving the Vice President and some of Yar’Adua irredentists, The Source gathered, were more of negotiations. The pro-Yar’Adua elements within the Federal Executive Council, the PDP and National Assembly , The Source learnt, are gripped with the fear of the unknown: what becomes of the positions they currently occupy under the Jonathan dispensation.
Information in The Source’s kitty indicate that the Yar’Adua elements who all the while have been laying roadblocks on Jonathan’s path to stepping into Yar’Adua’s shoes want assurances from the VP that their jobs will not be tampered with under his presidency, hence the series of meetings.
Though he looks soft and pliable, an associate of the Vice President told The Source that anyone who mistakes the VP’s genial conduct for weakness, will be doing so at his peril. Thus while Jonathan, a stickler for rules, will not unduly tamper with anybody’s job, provided such a person is loyal and dedicated, the associate was emphatic that anyone who has worked or is still working to undermine his authority may have kissed goodbye to his/her job. The import of this, The Source was told, is that a minor cabinet reshuffle under the new dispensation is highly probable.
The Vice President himself gave vent to this a fortnight ago in a reaction to the allegation that he was awaiting the directive of the First Lady, Turai Yar’Adua, before performing presidential functions as directed by Justice Dan Abutu of the Federal High Court, Abuja.
Talking tough, the Vice President, through his spokesman, Ima Niboro, warned key government officials who peddle such rumours to be ready for the exit door. “It is obvious that all these are part of the ongoing effort by some well-placed individuals within and outside the administration, to take maximum advantage of the unfortunate situation that Mr. President, though no fault of his, has found himself health wise,” the statement said.
The VP went further to state that “we are aware that these same people are sponsoring ridiculous stories in the media to the effect that the VP has already prepared a list of ministers and top executives of key parastatals to dismiss from the administration…. The VP uses this occasion to state that key officers of government that are on top of their jobs need not habour such fears. But those who rather than focus on delivering this administration’s mandate to the Nigerian people, prefer to cause acrimony and disunity in order to advance personal aggrandisement have every reason to fear.”
Though sectional agenda, on the part of the North, to a very large extent, accounts for the resistance to the emergence of Jonathan as Yar’Adua’s successor in the face of the latter’s debilitating health condition, The Source gathered that the fear of a Jonathan presidency by certain elements in government as regard safety of their jobs cuts across geo-political zones. “Most of these pro-Yar’Adua comments and schemings are not necessarily for the love of the sick president. They are all geared more towards self-preservation than love for Yar’Adua,” a PDP source told The Source.
Specifically, The Source was told that apart from playing safe so as not to go down in history as the first- ever heads of the National Assembly to have superintended the removal of a sitting president through the instrumentality of the constitution and legislation, both Mark and Bankole’s apparent pro-Yar Adua posture is predicated upon personal interest: The need to preserve their positions.
The fear is that a Jonathan presidency will ultimately result in some sort of re-zoning of key offices within the PDP fraternity. A revert to the zoning formula under President Olusegun Obasanjo, The Source reliably gathered, is inevitable with Jonathan’s ascension to power. This, exactly, according to sources, is the greatest headache of anti- Jonathan elements who are sure to be affected by the re-zoning formula.
In the National Assembly, the likely casualties of the re-zoning of key offices are Bankole and Mark. Under Obasanjo, the South-east and North west held the Senate and House of Representatives leadership, respectively. With Jonathan, another southerner as president, the same scenario, The Source gathered, will also likely play out.
The implication is that in the Senate, the beneficiary of the impending shifting of chairs is most likely going to be Mark’s deputy, Ekweremadu. Ironically, Ekweremadu, it was who two weeks ago moved a motion urging his colleagues to rise to the occasion and take a definite stand on the Yar’Adua debacle. But his principal, Mark, succeeded in stalling the motion.
In the same vein, Ogbulafor’s non-disposition towards Jonathan presidency, The Source gathered, is anchored on the fear that, that will mark the end of his chairmanship of the PDP. Political pundits say Jonathan presidency, no matter how short, will somehow result in re-ordering of the polity.
Thus, since it will evidently run counter to PDP’s internal geo-political arrangement, there is no way Ogbulafor, a prince from Umuahia, Abia State, will remain the party’s chair with Jonathan, an Ijaw from Bayelsa State, calling the shots in Aso Rock as president. In the Obasanjo dispensation, the PDP national chair was occupied by the North central zone.
Apart from its initial insistence that it must exhaust its eight-year presidential slot uninterrupted, Yar’Adua’s health issue notwithstanding, the North fear that with Jonathan whom they regard as a weak character as president, his presidency may be hijacked by certain powerful elements, thereby jeopardising the region’s remaining four- year slot to be heralded by the next general election. The region, The Source gathered, is specifically rankled by the closeness of the Vice President to former president Obasanjo.
The possibility of Obasanjo who
was instrumental to Jonathan’s emergence as VP, dictating the tenor of the VP’s presidency, The Source was told, is, perhaps, the North’s greatest worry.
The region is also worried that coming from the South south, a region that is stridently demanding for control of Nigeria’s oil resources, Jonathan as President may bend backward to give a somewhat tacit approval for his people’s agitation.
But all the apprehensions have thawed and wise counsel appears to be prevailing. The anti-Jonathan elements within and outside the PDP, The Source gathered, have come to a sudden realisation that their hard stance as regards the current political situation in the country could be a sure alibi for military intervention, in which case they all will be losers.
Fear of military inervention in the current debacle gained currency last week when the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Abdurahman Dambazau, disclosed that certain elements in the country were mounting pressure on the military to intervene. Dambazau: “The Nigerian Army has in recent times noted with dismay, some of the unnecessary, unwarranted and inflammatory comments, statements and utterances in some quarters capable of creating a sense of insecurity and dragging us back to the dark days of our nation’s history.”
The Army Chief further told a bewildered nation that, “We are equally aware of attempts by some people to drag the Army, which has remained neutral but absolutely committed to the survival of our nascent democracy into the political affairs of this country.” And to thwart any incursion into the political process by ambitious officers, the army authorities announced the restriction of troop movement.
Though all the roadblocks to Jonathan’s ascension to office as president have virtually been cleared, few Yar’Adua loyalists as at last week were still making last- ditch efforts to salvage the evaporising Yar’Adua presidency. One of such efforts was the reported importation of life support machines into the country. The idea, The Source gathered, was to pluck the ailing president from his hospital bed in Saudi Arabia straight to Aso Rock where he will be placed on life support machines with his doctors on stand-by to attend to him.
In the estimation of those behind this move, Yar’Adua’s presence in Aso Rock, though incapacitated by illness as to engage in the rigours of day-to-day running of the country, will give a semblance of normalcy in Aso Rock, thus truncating any further pressure to have him yield power to Jonathan on the ground that he cannot be running the affairs of the country from his hospital bed in Saudi Arabia.
An Aso Rock insider, however, told The Source last week that it will only take a miracle for the President to come back to his job, a healthy man. According to him, by the time Yar’Adua left the country for Saudi Arabia, he was virtually a walking skeleton, which prompted the call on him to resign.
A similar advice, penultimate week, came from a most unlikely quarter–from Obasanjo. At the Media Trust yearly Dialogue, the former President, in a reaction to insinuations that he imposed a sick man on the nation as president, admitted that he was aware of the president’s kidney problem, but insisted that at the time Yar’Adua picked the PDP presidential ticket, he was already out of dialysis–meaning he was healthy enough to stand the rigours of steering the affairs of the country.
The former president then fired the salvo: “Nobody picked Umaru Yar’Adua so that he will not perform...If you take up an appointment, or a job, elected or appointed or whatever and then your health starts failing you and you will not be able to satisfy yourself and the people you are supposed to serve, then, there is a path of honour and path of morality...”
The Source gathered that the former President’s admonition greatly unsettled Yar’Adua loyalists. Coming from a former president and chairman of the ruling party’s Board of Trustee (BOT), the full import of the comment The Source was told, was not lost on the president’s men. It further sent a strong signal to them that Jonathan’s presidency has become a fait accompli. For one, Obasanjo, though out of power, still commands considerable influence in the PDP and in the National Assembly.
Essentially, Jonathan is not new to goodluck. His impending ascension to the presidency of Nigeria will not be the first time he will be doing what a political analyst described as standing “firmly on history’s door steps." On December 12, 2005, he became Nigeria's first democratically unelected governor, having stepped into the shoes of his boss, Governor Deprieye Alamieyeseigha after the latter was impeached.
The Vice President is again about going down in history as Nigeria’s first democratically unelected President.
A reliable source told The Source that Jonathan, aware of his constitutional limitations as Vice President who is saddled with performing delegated functions of an absentee president, never got carried away by the clamour for him to forcefully assert himself as Acting President in the face of Yar’Adua hospitalisation. “He is fully aware of the hollowness of the office of Vice President and deputy governor and would not want to act beyond his bounds without the necessary constitutional back-up” , the source said.
In a interview with The Source in March, 2006 the then governor of Bayelsa State gave an insight into the truth about being an acting leader: “The acting does not really give you any powers, except you are a fool. Because if you say you are an acting governor, then you go and award contract, then the person comes the next day and insults you.”
The fear within the Northern establishment that once in power the VP will sit tight and refuse to give way for a northerner in the next election in the spirit of the internal rotational arrangement in the PDP, sources close to the Vice President told The Source, is largely misplaced because according to them, the VP is a man who plays by the rules, and so will rather quit than rock the boat.
This, indeed, could be gleaned from the snippets of his inaugural address as governor on December 12, 2006. Said he at that occasion: “I now bear a mandate as the number one messenger whose singular duty is to carry out the directives of our fathers, leaders... rest assured that Goodluck Jonathan would rather fail himself than betray the trust and confidence you have reposed on him.”
Will he make a similar pledge soon?