Assistant Editor, Dapo Falade, X-rays the politics and intrigues that preceded the recent endorsement of the much-talked-about ambition of President Goodluck Jonathan to contest the 2011 presidential election, by the South-West chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

PENULTIMATE Saturday, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party Board of Trustees (BoT), led other leaders, stakeholders and thousands of party members in the South-West to the famous Parliament Building within the premises of the Oyo State Governor’s Office to lend a voice to the growing, albeit controversial, call on President Goodluck Jonathan to remain in power beyond May 29, 2011 by contesting the forthcoming presidential election. The South-West PDP, at the meeting, which was well attended by the who-is-who in the party hierarchy in the zone, unanimously endorsed Jonathan as the zone’s candidate for the election.

While the entire country is still awaiting a formal pronouncement from Jonathan on his intention to run for the presidency in the election, the endorsement by the PDP South-West and its resolve to ensure victory for Jonathan at the 2011 polls are a pointer to the fact that the president is, indeed, neck-deep in the race, even as agitations still rage on over the controversies generated by the issue of zoning. The zoning arrangement, which was originally a PDP affair, has become a subject of discourse in the polity.

Asking the question, “Why Jonathan for president?”, in his keynote address at the Ibadan meeting, Dr. Omololu Olunloyo, a former Oyo State governor in the Second Republic, was of the opinion that “the spirited debate on who should or could contest elections for the position of president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has not only been instructive, but also challenging, although sometimes confusing.” He added that the various debates on the issue notwithstanding, Nigerians had not been collectively honest or fair to one another in adhering to the four concepts relating to who qualifies for what namely, the principles of federal character, rotation, zoning and power shift.

Supporting the call for a Jonathan presidency beyond 2011, Olunloyo further said, “Democracy comes in hundreds of forms and shapes. Like law, it is organic and operates in a thousand ways. It grows and metamorphoses. Nigeria’s democracy has developed with time, divine intervention and man’s constitutional contraptions, all put together to ensure a desirable progression to power shift to the Niger Delta, indeed the South-South. All the forces that make this possible should be recognised and respected.’’

He went further to make some mathematical calculations of the number of years each zones across the country had been at the helm of affairs, declaring that, of all the six geo-political zones, the most qualified to occupy the presidential seat in 2011 is the South-South. “With some quick rough calculations, the least qualified zone today is the South-West…the most deserving zone for 2011 is the South-South. We can thus take a reasonable position to support the South-South, the Niger Delta, etc, for the presidency…Dear leaders of the South-West, our famed sophistication and sense of justice and fair play point clearly that we must rationally support the South-South, to which a constitutional legal power shift has already taken root. Let us keep it with Jonathan from the South-South meanwhile.”

Hailing the unanimous decision taken by the PDP leaders in the South-West, the Oyo State chapter of the Goodluck Support Group (GSG) in a release jointly signed by its coordinator and publicity secretary, Dare Adeleke and Kehinde Olaosebikan, respectively, said that “the Yoruba have again proved to be the most vibrant, focused and united race, taking their pride of place as the hub of political development of Nigeria”, adding that it was a decision taken “in tandem with the genuine wishes and aspirations of the overwhelming majority of their people.

”We wholeheartedly welcome and commend the unanimous decision taken at the stakeholders’ forum of the PDP. Clearly, it is the most pragmatic, soothing, uniting and objective decision taken so far by the frontline political leaders of the South-West since 1999 when we began the current political dispensation.”

But beyond the Ibadan endorsement were some political undertones, moves and counter-moves taken to ensure the success or otherwise of the push for a Jonathan presidency beyond 2011. Before the meeting at Ibadan, the nation’s undisputed political grandmaster (at least, at the moment), Obasanjo, had punctured the agitations for the retention of the zoning arrangement as he had earlier declared that there was nothing like zoning in the PDP. His view had the support of some other prominent PDP leaders across the land, including Chief Tony Anenih and Chief Solomon Lar, among several others. The former president had also admonished Jonathan not to shy away from contesting the 2011 elections.

In the same vein, Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala of Oyo State had let the cat out of the bag when he openly declared, at a parley with newsmen in his office in late July, that the president would run in the 2011 presidential race. Even while Nigerians were then anticipating a declaration from Jonathan, the governor had confidently said; “Quote me, President Jonathan will contest the 2011 presidential election; forget what some people are saying to the contrary.” A pro-Jonathan to the core, the governor, in his welcome address at the meeting, charged PDP members to always realise the important role the zone played whenever critical and knotty political issues confronted the country, adding that the zone must live up to its ratings, particularly in the conduct of the 2011 elections.

In the build up to the Ibadan meeting, and pursuing the Jonathan presidency with zeal and fervour, the Ota farmer, earlier last month, convened a meeting in his house where he impressed upon the PDP South-West governors, the reason why the president should be supported and adopted/endorsed for the presidential election. The Ota meeting was said to have been convened to pre-empt two of the governors who were said to rooting for the candidacy of former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, in the same election, for different reasons of course. As exclusively reported by Sunday Tribune about two weeks ago, the Ibadan meeting was a follow up to the earlier one convened by the Owu high chief.

One of the party chieftains who spoke with Nigerian Tribune at the end of the Ibadan meeting, strictly on condition of anonymity, disclosed that it took a lot of diplomacy and persuasion, particularly from Obasanjo, before the two governors could eventually be convinced of the need to support Jonathan, rather than Babangida, for the 2011 presidency, in deference to the wishes of the majority of the PDP leaders and party members in the South-West.

”I will not deceive you, the meeting was a not a tea affair and the decision we arrived at was not attained on a platter of gold. We have many people eyeing the presidency; the most popular among them being President Jonathan and General Babangida. The two have quite a large following within the party’s fold and they are both capable of  leading the country from 2011, but we have to settle for the incumbent president to fly the PDP flag in 2011 to ensure policy continuation. However, we are not doing this without laying our cards on the table; the South-West will surely negotiate its terms with the president.

”We also had a herculean task convincing some of our leaders, particularly Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola, on the need to endorse Jonathan for the presidency. I cannot hide my admiration for the governor, who found it extremely difficult to sacrifice his long-term relationship with IBB for the 2011 elections. When his view (as it was done to his colleagues) was sought on the unanimous endorsement of Jonathan by the South-West PDP, Oyinlola maintained that he had known the former military ruler for more than 40 years and would remain loyal to him, being his boss in the military. He, however, told us that he would defer to the wishes of the people and the party in the South-West since he was made governor through their mandate”, he said.

The endorsement of President Jonathan by the South-West PDP may have had come and gone, but the question remains, will the spirit of the endorsement be respected when the chips are down? This question became pertinent given what some party members said was an attempt by some of the leaders to impose the president on them for an alleged selfish interest. One of the former state chairmen of the party in the zone, who also pleaded anonymity, told the Nigerian Tribune that he would not rule out the possibility of some of them voting for IBB during the party primaries, adding that the average Yoruba leader was always known to be independent-minded. He, however, expressed the optimism that the stand of the majority would come to bear in determining which of the zones the pendulum swings to ahead of the 2011 presidential election.