PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

2011: Another Word for Jonathan

Politics everywhere seems motivated more by power than by principles. This, however, is particularly so in Nigeria where politics has become far and away the most lucrative business in town.

Take the controversy over power rotation or zoning, for example. It is obvious that both sides to the argument have been motivated more by the lure of office (and by the even greater lure of its corridors where the chances of permanent residency are higher – ask Professor Jerry Gana and Chief Tony Anenih ) than by principles. This is why both sides in the arguments, essentially split along the North/South divide, have reversed their erstwhile positions on the issue.

In reversing their positions, however, it is obvious that the erstwhile proponents of zoning, mostly Southern politicians, have been completely shameless about their reversal. Indeed it seems quite in character for some of them to enter in to pacts with absolutely no intention of honouring them.

Take, for instance, Chief Tony Anenih. Last week I referred to his 2002 injunction, as chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party, to Chief Audu Ogbe as the party’s chairman, to adhere strictly to its zoning formula in electing its party officials and its candidates for government offices all the way to 2015. A little over a month ago, however, he published a full page advert in several newspapers in which he referred to the same arrangement as “purported.”

And what is the basis of his reversal? “A careful analysis of the above table,” he said rather disingenuously, “shows that the purported zoning arrangement was observed more in the breach than in practice, especially in 2003 and 2007. The fact that some aspirants stepped down for others is not a sign that the purported zoning was respected.”

Unlike his now estranged principal, former president, General Olusegun Obasanjo, Anenih did not completely deny its existence. He only suggested that it should be jettisoned because it was never fully complied with. Even then he was, as I’ve said, being rather disingenuous.

First, he should know that if breaching a rule is enough grounds to discard it then we would have since discarded all our laws. Indeed there would have been no need to enact them to begin with since there will always be law and rule breakers.

Second, even the most casual look at the table he published of those who bided for PDP’s presidential ticket between 1998 and 2007, shows that only two Northern politicians, the late Alhaji Abubakar Rimi and Chief Barnabas Gemade, breached the arrangement in 2003 when power at the centre was supposed to remain in the South. Compare this with 16 Southern politicians who sought to contest for the party’s presidential ticket in 2007 when it was supposed to rotate to the North.

Obviously in this case at least the Northern politicians behaved more honourably than their Southern counterparts.

Third, a close reading of Anenih’s advert shows he was not only somewhat disingenuous in suggesting that zoning should be jettisoned. He tried to be too clever by half by, at the same time, counselling President Goodluck Jonathan to think twice before throwing his hat into the ring.

“On a final note,” the chief said in the last paragraph of his advert, “President Jonathan must bear in mind that the attainment of the above goals (electoral reforms, power and energy and peace in the Delta region and social stability in the country) will require a lot of personal sacrifices and, sometimes, decisions that may be unpleasant of political allies, relations and friends.”

Two paragraphs earlier he had said he, and he believed, the majority of Nigerians, would support Jonathan’s 2011 presidential bid if the president met the four targets he had set. Any honest prognosis of the president’s remaining ten months would find it difficult to conclude that he will indeed acquit himself, especially based on his middling performance to date.

It is obvious then that our clever chief was merely trying to walk on both sides of the street between those who want the president to make his bid and those, like me, who think it is a dishonourable, if not unwise, for him to do so.

Even then the chief’s fence sitting is more respectable and arguably even more honourable than the outright denial by Obasanjo that there was no zoning arrangement in the ruling party to begin with.

However, the former president’s denial should surprise no one. Virtually anyone who has done deals with the elder statesman has lived to regret it. Ask the Northern politicians who did deals with him 1998. Ask Afenifere which also did deals with him in 2003. Or indeed ask the South-South politicians who thought they had a deal with him to support his Third Term agenda during the National Conference he organized in mid 2005 in return for his support of their “resource control.”

All of them lived to regret the deals they struck with him. Afenifere chieftains, for example, would forever rue the day they agreed to campaign for his re-election in the South-West in return for safe passage for the region’s opposition Alliance for Democracy governors.

Afenifere dutifully fulfilled its side of the bargain but what did Obasanjo give it in return? “We have already got our reward,” said the late Chairman of the organization with apparent bitter sarcasm in an interview in the Sunday Punch of April 27, 2003. “It is the total take-over of the South-West (laughter). That’s our reward. And it is a very sad reward.”

The South-South also fell victim to the man’s Machiavellian politics during the 2005 National Conference. Throughout that conference the South-South, the South-West, the South-East and the Middle-Belt met regularly in the thick of the night to plot against the rest of the North with more than the tacit approval of the man who had come to perceive the region as enemy territory. But what happened in the end?

“The South-West betrayed the South-South,” said Professor Itse Sagay, a prominent member of the conference from the South-South, in an interview in The Guardian of July25, 2005. “There is no question about that. It was a clear deliberate betrayal...We would agree – the South-South, South-West, South-East and Middle-Belt. We had a forum chaired by a South-Westerner throughout.”

The almost lone Southern voice for keeping its side of the zoning deal was Governor Lucky Igbinideon of Edo State. In an interview with Thisday (July 4, 2004), he said power should return to the North and remain there till 2015. “I think the North should have it,” he said. “If the North honoured part of their agreement in 1998, I think the South should be gentlemanly enough to allow it to go to the North in 2007 so that in 2015 it will come back to the South.” The poor governor was thoroughly rounded upon by most of his compatriots for daring to say, in effect, that there should be honour even among thieves.

So if I were President Jonathan I will think twice before heeding the counsels of Anenih, because it is mealy-mouthed, and that of Obasanjo, because it is characteristically born out of malice.

I will also not listen to General T. Y. Danjuma’s urgings to contest in spite of his reputation for straight talk for at least one good reason; it is puzzling that he and Obasanjo should share the same objective so soon after their long-running friendship fell apart ever so bitterly about two years ago.

At that time the general had terrible things to say about his former boss and friend. In an interview with The Guardian of February 17, 2008, a little after his 70^th birthday, he told the newspaper the reason for Obasanjo’s conspicuous absence at the birthday party.

“I ,” Danjuma said, “didn’t invite Obasanjo to my 70^th birthday and I don’t know what I would have done if he came uninvited. I would probably have called the police to throw him out. A country that took him out of jail and made him a president; he abused Nigeria, he deceived Nigeria and he deserves a second term in prison and we will make sure he ends up there.”

One possible answer to the puzzle of Obasanjo’s and Danjuma’s joint support for a Jonathan presidency in breach of the PDP’s subsisting zoning is, of course, the fact that in politics there are no permanent friends, only permanent interests. This answer, however, begs the question about what the permanent interest between the two gentlemen could be.

Nothing Obasanjo has done since he left office in 2007 shows he has any regrets for his eight years of misrule. It is therefore unlikely that their pursuit of the same objective through the proxy of a Jonathan presidency next year is motivated by the love of Jonathan or anything other than self-aggrandisement.