THERE is a feeling of déjà vu in the present effort to conscript President Goodluck Jonathan into the 2011 presidential race. The country has witnessed it on at least two occasions previously. Surely, nobody will easily forget the heat generated by the seeming unending transition to civil rule programme of former military president, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, which was read in some quarters as a calculated effort by him to perpetuate himself in office.  He rode to office on populist sentiments and Nigerians, who were roughened by the draconian policies of the preceding regime of Major General Muhammdau Buhari, embraced the toothy general who cut the picture of a benevolent dictator.

General Babangida legalised the formation of political parties in 1989 and people of like minds cashed in on the freedom to form political parties only for him to turn around and disband them. He came up with the contraption of “a little to the right and a little to the left,” which jammed every politician in just two government-run political parties that subsequently produced civilian leaders from the ward to the state levels as he held on as president in a diarchic arrangement.

He threw away the outcome of the presidential primary elections conducted by both parties on account of alleged widespread irregularities and banned the candidates that participated in them.

When, eventually, presidential election was held three years after the commencement of the transition to civil rule programme, he failed to declare the outcome.  His annulment of the June 12, 1993 election, which the late Chief Moshood Kashimawo Abiola was poised to win, was thought to be his last ditch effort to hang on to power.

However, in spite of the public outcry against the annulment, there were numerous Nigerians who thought IBB was the best leader the country had ever had and should indeed continue in office. Arguments remained over the intendment of his generous dispensation of patronage which some saw as a way to curry favour of stakeholders to support him in his unuttered ambition to extended his rule. But whatever intentions he may have had about the presidency did not quite materialise as he was eventually forced to step aside.

General Sani Abacha, who came into the saddle after the interregnum of Chief Ernest Shonekan, witnessed the era of “who the cap fits,” a common refrain by advocates of his transmogrification from a beret-clad military dictator to civilian cap-wearing president. Not minding his perceived trampling on human rights in a manner cynics said had never been experienced in the annals of this country, the campaign to have him as as a civilian president was loud and persistent, and every indication pointed to the fact that he was unstoppable in the mission, until the cruel hands of death snatched him away.

Just as people engaged in deliberate schemes for both former leaders to remain in office then, the nation is now witnessing another well orchestrated effort to have President Goodluck Jonathan to contest in next year’s presidential election, which would keep a southerner in power against the power rotation principle of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The similarity between both former military leaders and President Goodluck Jonathan however stops at the point of their being incumbent leaders when the clamour for them to remain in office ensued. Jonathan’s emergence on the scene is basically by default.

Things would have been different if President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua had not passed away before he could complete the tenure of office allocated to the North. Many argue that the rotation policy has been tampered with through a divine process that ensured that Jonathan is the one at the helms.  An individual from the South-South geo-political zone, which, even though is the goose that lays the golden egg, may never have figured in the rotation arrangement.

Opinion is swelling among Nigerians, especially outside the core North, for Jonathan to run. The South-South has thrown its weight behind him; the  South East and South West have not showed any aversion to the idea, while the Northern Governors’ Forum has granted him the right to contest if he so desires. The aggregate of this is that the ground has been softened for him to join the race and it looks like he is ready to go a step further than the aforementioned leaders who would have loved to remain in office.

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Jonathan
written by Adeniyi dare, December 15, 2010

d north are very selfish,dey shld come out wit wat dey have achieved 4 dis nation all d years dey have ruled,2 me dis is a divine arraingement and any northern whatsoeva dat terisi would face or is bound 2 face disapointment

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