MAY 13, 2012 BY TUNDE ODESOLA AND MIKE ODIEGWU 33 COMMENTS
An underground campaign to ensure that President Goodluck Jonathan contests and wins the 2015 presidential election has been secretly launched by some of the President’s closest associates, SUNDAY PUNCH has learnt. However, this newspaper could not confirm if the President is behind the plan.
Although the President came out recently to warn his party members to stop politicking and talking of 2015, saying, “2015 is not on my mind,” sources said those behind the plan had not stopped.
Our correspondents found out that rather than abate, the move to ensure that the President got a second term was growing.
A top member of the party, who spoke to our correspondent, said a “discreet political mobilisation” had commenced to ensure that Jonathan won the PDP primaries and the presidential election in 2015.
The source who pleaded anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said the recent election of core Jonathan loyalists into party offices at the PDP congress was part of the plan. He said leaders of the party at the national and geopolitical levels had been carefully selected by president’s loyalists to work on “Project Return Jonathan.”
“The move is on-going and the party leaders have the mandate to make it happen. We are going to experience another round of crisis in the party soon. Despite what those loyal to some leaders in the North are doing within the party, Jonathan will have a second term in office,” a senior party official said.
Our correspondent reports that before and at the March 24 congress of the party, the President and his associates put great efforts and resources into ensuring that only candidates loyal to the President emerged as party officers.
Most of the aspirants who had planned to contest against the President’s loyalists were forced to step down. For example, the PDP chairman, Bamanga Tukur, emerged winner despite losing a zonal election at his geopolitical zone.
Sources in the PDP told our correspondent that Project Return Jonathan had, understandably, received the greatest traction in the South South, the President’s geopolitical zone.
While dismissing reports of a plan to contest in 2015, Jonathan, through a statement issued by presidential spokesperson, Dr. Reuben Abati, had said that “mischief-makers and opportunists” were latching onto his alleged ambition to heat up the polity.
The statement had read, “The pointless, diversionary and very distractive hue and cry about the president’s alleged ambition to seek a second term in office is becoming increasingly disturbing by the day with headlines such as ‘Jonathan’s 2015 ambition can break up Nigeria’ and ‘Jonathan’s 2015 ambition fuelling insecurity,’ now regularly fare in our newspapers and on the internet.
“For the avoidance of any doubt whatsoever, President Jonathan wishes to reiterate that his primary concern and the focus of all his efforts now, just about a year into the four-year tenure for which he was elected in April 2011, is to deliver on his promise of positive national transformation.”
However, watchers have pointed out that most of the calls for the President to contest in 2015 and the surreptitious moves to actualise the plan are being carried out by some of the President’s known associates.
They include prominent politicians in the South-South, power brokers in the PDP and influential businessmen.
In Yenagoa, the capital of Bayelsa, during the week, the National Vice-Chairman, South-South Zone of the party, Dr. Stephen Oru, said, “PDP must triumph in the July 14 governorship election in Edo State to provide a unified regional base for Jonathan to actualise his second term presidential ambition in 2015.
“Being the sons and daughters of the South-South zone and since the President hails from our zone, it is only fair that we win back Edo State so that he (Jonathan) will have 100 per cent PDP states behind him in 2015 when he will be contesting a second tenure.”
Oru who spoke in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State while inaugurating the state executive council of the party, pointedly said that the region must re-strategise to actualise Jonathan’s re-election ambition.
“When the former President Olusegun Obasanjo came to power in 1999, PDP had no place in the South-West. But during his second term election, we won the South-West with the exception of Lagos State.
“But now, it is important that we have a 100 per cent PDP in the South-South before 2015.
“The president at a forum said the issue of contesting in 2015 was a distraction. But let me state clearly that the president is as qualified as any other Nigerian to vie for the presidency of this nation come 2015.
“He has the right to contest in 2015 because this is his first tenure. When we get to the bridge in 2015, I know we will cross it with the president,” Oru said.
Opposition parties however told our correspondents on Saturday evening that they knew all along that Jonathan was being economical with the truth.
The National Chairman, Action Congress of Nigeria, Chief Bisi Akande, stated that the President was insincere about his political ambition in 2015.
Akande, who spoke through his Press Secretary, Mr. Lani Baderinwa, said, “There is a difference between I’m not contesting in 2015 and 2015 is not on my mind.”
According to Akande, a more categorical statement from the president should have been “I am not contesting in 2015” and not “2015 not on my mind.”
He said, “I am not contesting in 2015 is different from 2015 is not on my mind. By saying 2015 is not on my mind, the president means he is going to contest in 2015. His statement is another way of saying I am interested in 2015.”
Also, the National Publicity Secretary, Congress for Progressive Change, Mr. Rotimi Fashakin said the on-going campaign by a section of the PDP was an indication that Jonathan was not trustworthy.
He asked Jonathan to demonstrate that he was not interested in 2015 by arresting persons making covet campaign for his re-election.
Fashakin insisted that the activities of the President’s foot soldiers had further polarised the country and negatively affected the peaceful coexistence in the country.
“We need to say for the umpteenth time the President should not be trusted. If he is not interested in 2015 election, he ought to arrest those making covet campaigns for him. He knows the enormous heat that these schemes are generating, but prefers to maintain an aloofness that is not in consonance with responsible leadership.
“We know how his subterranean support for the oddities done on his behalf has hurt the peaceful coexistence of the diverse people of Nigeria. We are often miffed about the indecent obfuscation all these with sanctimonious homilies from the temple of Aso Villa,” he said
Speculations that the President wanted a second term despite his denials gained ground after a PDP member Mr. Cyriacus Njoku had approached an Abuja High Court asking it to determine if Jonathan was eligible to run for a second term.
The suit came after some public commentators had said that the President was serving a second term after having served out the term of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua.
Njoku, citing Section 137(1)(b) of the 1999 Constitution, had argued that Jonathan could not swear to an oath of office again, having taken the oath twice. However, the president in a 15-paragraph counter affidavit described Njoku’s suit as “frivolous”. The president argued that he was entitled to a second term under the 1999 Constitution.
Critics of the administration had assailed the court case, alleging that it was contrived to test Nigerian’s reactions to a Jonathan candidacy in 2015 and also settle the controversial question of whether he could contest.
SOURCE: The Punch - Nigeria's Most Widely Read Newspaper 13 May 2012.
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