A s the 2015 date for the next general election draws near, a lot of intrigues are playing out in the political circle. The tension being generated has been a source of concern to most Nigerians who are afraid of the prediction by a United States agency that with the trend, the country could be balkanised before that election in 2015.

In that prediction, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the espionage arm of the United States (US) intelligence apparatchik released a report in 2006, in which it predicted that Nigeria may disintegrate before 2015. According to the agency, then, Nigeria as a corporate entity was likely to splinter along tribal and sectarian lines in 2015 if some of the inherent fault lines were not properly managed and controlled. Though this prediction then received sharp reaction from some citizens, most people not only condemned it, but also criticised the CIA and the US over the warning with the claim that Nigerians possess the uncanny capacity to manage the fragile peace and the unity that has bonded the people together since the amalgamation in 1914.

However, there are ominous signs on the ground as the country is currently battling the intense terrorism of the Boko Haram sect which has turned the North into a slaughter slab with blood flowing on the streets in the past two years. The problem seems to have overwhelmed the government as it has not been able to find a solution to the problem. At a stage, the people were close to losing hope on the solution to the insurgency by the militant sect. The military which has drafted to the ‘war’ zones has not found a permanent solution to the problem.

President Jonathan is presently using a carrot and stick approach by partly engaging in dialogue with the sect and at the same time enforcing the use of force through the Joint Task Force (JTF).

On this issue of terrorism act by the Boko Haram and the response of the government to it, Niger State Governor, Alhaji Babangida Aliyu, who is also the Chairman of the Northern Governors’ Forum, warned of imminent disintegration if the government continued to treat treasonable acts and terrorism with kid gloves. The governor cautioned that Nigerians should stop politicising such issues as the future of the nation was at stake.

Aliyu was making veiled reference to the arrest of a top notch of the sect who was jailed three years and the pronouncements made by Pastor Tunde Bakare, vice-presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in the April 2011 election, during the fuel subsidy protests, calling for regime change as well as a statement credited to General Muhammadu Buhari who was alleged to have said he would make the country ungovernable if he did not win the April 2011 election.

He said: “We have to work to solve the present security situation in the country. We cannot only depend on prayers without work. Most countries at peace today did not achieve it through prayers or else, we will gradually work ourselves towards the projection that Nigeria will disintegrate by 2015.”

As the country is battling with the insurgency in the North, many believe though the sect attacks look religious and may have political undertone. Politics has also brought another anxiety, which is pegging on who will rule the country in 2015. While the North believed it was its turn to take over the presidency after the late President Umaru Yar’Adua couldn’t complete even his first term of two terms based on the rotation within the ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, President Jonathan’s tribesmen, especially the Ijaw leaders, also believe that under the constitution he has the right to contest the 2015 poll and are calling on him to go for a second term. The crises in almost all the state chapters of the PDP have also made the political landscape unpredictable as the party perpetually engulfed in unresolved feuds.

It would be recalled that it was the same Governor Aliyu that stirred a hornet’s nest when he said that President Jonathan signed a pact with northern governors that he would only run for a term.

Though the president denied ever signing any pact with the governors or anyone that he would run for only a term, many political watchers recalled that it was Dalhatu Tafida, the Nigerian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, who first let the world into the working of the president’s mind. At a press conference in Abuja in late 2010, a day ahead of Jonathan’s formal declaration to run in the 2011 presidential election, Mr. Tafida, who was then the Director General of the Jonathan/Sambo Campaign Organisation, was quoted to have said that the president wouldn’t seek another term in 2015. He said he would be available for only a single term if elected.

“The President wants to run for one term…Let us give him the four years and see how he performs,” Tafida implored. That explanation seemed logical and reasonable at the time following the subsisting power rotation formula between the North and the South. President Olusegun Obasanjo, a southerner of Yoruba extraction, was in office for eight years. The late President Umaru Yar’Adua, a northerner, was therefore expected to take the North’s eight-year turn. But he died and this foisted Jonathan who was Yar’Adua’s second-in-command on the nation.

Though President Jonathan has maintained a sealed lip as to whether he would run or not as he keeps saying that 2015 is a long time, the body language of his aides, however, points to the president seeking another term in office. For instance, in his reaction to the Niger State governor’s claim that the president endorsed a pact with northern governors to quit in 2015, Presidential Adviser on Political Matters, Ahmed Gulak, said the claim was “frivolous” and a figment of Aliu’s imagination.

But one thing that is clear: there is no constitutional impediment for Jonathan if he decides to run in 2015 as this has been tested in court and he has received affirmation that he can run if he so desired. •However, the North, through its apex body, Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, is insisting it is its turn to produce the president.

The northern apex body rejected the candidature of President Jonathan for the upcoming election. •ACF Chairman, Alhaji Aliko Mohammed, made the forum’s position known during its annual general meeting held at its headquarters on Sokoto Road, Kaduna. Also, outspoken former governor of Kaduna State, Alhaji Lawal Kaita, and controversial National Vice Chairman of ACF, Senator Joseph Kennedy Waku, have insisted that the North would not support Jonathan for a second term in office. The forum had also accused the President of being behind the divide-and-rule tactics allegedly being used against the North ahead of 2015.

Of late, the utterance of pardoned Niger Delta ex-militant Asari Dokubo had created tension in political circles. He threatened that Nigeria would become history if his kinsman, Jonathan did not enjoy a second term as president. Dokubo’s outburst is in sync with that of Ijaw leader and former minister of Information, Chief Edwin Clark, who had boasted that even if heaven falls, Jonathan must continue as president in 2015. This generated a lot of tension and the fact that the president did not call his foot soldiers to order, heightened speculations that they were speaking for him.

Another issue that has heated the polity and that may have link with the 2015 polls is the Chairmanship of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF). This very powerful group, it is believed, could determine who becomes the next president. In 2010, President Jonathan had to enter into a controversial deal with them in order to pick the PDP ticket. Now, ahead of 2015, some PDP governors are not in the same ship with the president over 2015. The last NGF election, which Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, who has been at war with Jonathan, was re-elected as chairman produced a lot of drama as pro-Jonathan governors led by Akwa Ibom State governor, Godswill Akpabio rejected the result. The situation has led to the polarisation of the body, one under Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau who is believed to be working for Jonathan, and the other under Amaechi.

The tension generated by the NGF election coupled with the crisis in Rivers State has raised anxiety in the land. Following the apparent tension in the land, four governors, made up of Adamawa’s Murtala Nyako; Niger’s Muazu Babangida Aliyu; Jigawa’s, Sule Lamido, and Kano’s Rabiu Musa Kwakwanso have visited former President Obasanjo in Abeokuta and this was perceived by political analysts as the kick-starting of another phase of the battle for the 2015 presidency.

After the Abeokuta visit, the governors moved to Minna, where they had a parley with two former heads of state, Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar. Though Nyako was not at the meeting, his spirit was with his other colleagues as he spoke from Yola where he reinforced the plan being pursued in Minna by his compatriots.

While the parley with the former leaders was wrapped as a forum to discuss national issues and proffer solutions to the crises in the polity, the utterances and body language of participants point to the fact that it was all about 2015. With these cracks in the country’s wall, the question on the lips of many Nigerians is: would the 2015 election be attainable?

They are worried about the steps that need to be taken to douse the tension in the land as the nation prepares to go to the polls in a few months time, starting with the Anambra governorship in November and those of Ekiti and Osun State next year. Reacting recently, Lagos lawyer and human rights crusader, Dr Tunji Braithwaite, said part of what need to be done is the convocation of a National Conference and swift war against corrupt practices.

“There is a lot more of corruption that has actually pauperised Nigerians. On top of that, you have insecurity, some heinous crimes that we never experienced in the past like wholesale kidnapping and wholesale corruption. A man stole N7 billion, he pleaded guilty and you fine him less than N1 million. And you have hundreds of thousands of hapless Nigerians being sent to jail for accepting a bribe of N500 or for wandering. In the midst of rising widespread pauperisation of the people, you find legislators, people in government flaunting ill-gotten wealth right in the face of the masses, which include young, brilliant graduates and undergraduates. When you do this, you have actually set off a revolution and it is irreversible. I see a situation where the 2015 elections will not even hold unless a lot is done between now and then to avert an inferno.

“Let the government be seen to be dealing ruthlessly with the corrupt elements among them. These two things must be addressed before 2015 elections. Addressing the issue of corruption is at the root of the 2015 elections because the people now know that their votes do not count. The people are increasingly being aware of the futility of going to queue and cast ballot because the electoral system is characterised with fraudulent practices. So, people are going to say what is the use,” Braithwaite emphasised.

Also speaking with Sunday Mirror recently, former Nigeria Bar Association, NBA, President, Chief Priscilla Kuye said, “We must have a National Conference before the election. This is very important. I don’t know the nomenclature that would be given to it, whether a Sovereign National Conference or National Conference. But it is important that we dialogue. It is better to dialogue than to fight a war. I saw it in the newspapers a few days ago, is it not the president that said we couldn’t afford another civil war. As it is now, there is discontentment in the country. So what we can do now is to sit down and dialogue or talk. We need to know what is annoying each state.

“With the federal system, there is too much power at the centre. I think some of the powers should be given to the states. I don’t know what sort of system we are operating. Personally for me, the presidential system of government is too expensive. I don’t know why we cannot have a parliamentary system, which is cheap. But I know the senators and members of the House of Representatives will not agree; they would say it is the presidential system of government that they want. National Conference is important; we need to discuss how we want this country to move on. We need to discuss whether we want a unitary system of government, a federal system, anything that we want. Even if we want it in our constitution to say this country is secular, and people are fighting. Some say Boko Haram issue is religion, others say it is political. But shedding of innocent blood, which is against the commandment of God, should be stopped. The only way to stop it is to dialogue about it.

“I think the president should convene a National Conference so that all these discontents from among Nigerians and the states will be discussed and we will be able to find solution to them.

That is the only solution and we must do it before the 2015 election so that there will be justice in this country. This is because if there is no justice, there can be no peace in the country and there wouldn’t be development”, Kuye said. National Publicity Secretary of the pan- Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere, Mr Yinka Odumakin said, “It takes a demented political class to pretend that all is well within our country and that we have a good setting to conduct elections in 2015 given the culture of fear spreading across the country. “Genuine patriots must be worried that it appears that the high level of insecurity in the country is not being given the desired engagement.

“We are convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that any attempt to continue to treat the insecurity situation in the country as if it provides a good distraction from people asking for good governance is bound to backfire as a full maturation of what is going on will consume all.

“In order to restore normalcy to Nigeria and bring the country from the brink, Afenifere suggests immediate convocation of a National Security Summit to bring leaders and stakeholders together from across the country to brainstorm on the causes of the virtual security collapse in the country and proffer solutions to them.

“The suggested summit should be a prelude to a National Conference that will address the structures of Nigeria in a way that the constituent units can live peaceably within a proper federation built on justice, equity and fair play. This is the irreducible minimum to stop the drift going on.”

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Posted in Nigerian Newspapers. A DisNaija.Com network.

Source: National Mirror Newspaper

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