Jonathan’s options with Amaechi’s victory
A rat-race for a candidate in a show-yourself election is poor strategy. It’s usually a result of high-wire intrigue which can blur calculations. First, it was Governor Shema, then Governor Yuguda; none agreed to step down for the other or so it seemed, and barely two hours to the election, Governor Jang emerged as Shema and Yuguda declined. In their thinking, Jang should use two hours to dismantle Amaechi’s 2-year preparation. Then he must be a meteorite.
It’s said that Shema was intentionally chosen as a ready replacement for Sambo. As with intrigues, nature throws a cog if the target is clean. Tampering with Sambo will definitely hurt Jonathan. It isn’t an option. In the election proper, Jang lost, Amaechi won. The anti-Amaechi camp protested, rejected the result and went ahead to form a parallel NGF with Jang as leader. One can understand the frustration, but that action may not be the most reasonable. First, Jonathan had taken credit as the Nigerian leader who respects democratic choice. Turning around now is to minus from a plus. If he goes ahead to muscle it through, it may rebound in 2015.
That said, Amaechi’s intrigues are equally in bad taste. It’s said that back-door forces had chosen him to become the vice president to a preordained choice for president and serving northern governor. After decades of wailing in the dark, this is the first time a Niger-Deltan has climbed Nigeria’s pinnacle of power. Amaechi, a Niger-Deltan, wants to be the one to dismantle his own. That’s the grudge. It’s deep-seated. It’s credible. It’s not just with Jonathan, products of the former Eastern Region now part of south-south have to penitently question their political behaviour. They opened the Eastern flank during the war and both they and their neighbours they felt like undoing lost. Both still suffer that loss individually and collectively. Now again, Amaechi wants to repeat the same flank-opening because treachery didn’t earn rebuke. Nobody was punished in the first, and that gave way to repeat attempts. By providence, both regions are coming together to agree with Willy Brandt’s saying that ‘what belongs together grows together’. But these are sore points; they need remedy. It was Biafra yesterday, Jonathan today, who’s next?
Maybe this angle of the unfolding is unknown to Amaechi. His approach is that of a simple political man. If he gets aware of this dimension, he’d be more cautious. It’s not ethnicity, it’s not tribalism, it’s not regionalism or sectionalism. It’s simply being discreet in a competitive political clime. With all Obasanjo’s excesses, no south-westerner rose to stand him down and no westerner opened the western flank. If they put a sage there, they allowed him to sage on; if they put a fool there, they allowed him to fool on until time-up. Their political experience taught them that putting up two captains from a region tears that region apart. Remember Awolowo and Akintola. That’s exactly what could creep into the south-south. Amaechi should see it.
The way the PDP is presently going about it can’t deliver the message. Already, Amaechi knows that he has powerful forces against him; he knows that the PDP is his party, at least, for now; he knows that leaving the PDP or working against it is a political pit; he knows that the roses opposition parties are dangling may not be roses after all. These would help him redefine himself more appropriately in line with his party’s vision. All these will fall out if he’s ostracised and humiliated. With these two templates, the Jonathan and Amaechi camps can see the imperative to close ranks. There’s unnecessary ego at play. Amaechi must humble himself as well as understand the meaning of loyalty, and Jonathan must appreciate. There’s no way the PDP can succeed entering into election with a divided house. They’ll be smoked.
Jonah Jang is not high-handed, neither is Akpabio unwilling to understand. It’s that someone felt ridiculed and set ego rolling over reason. It’s that Amaechi staying in PDP but propped by the opposition is against the wind of play. He’ll be seen as ‘the enemy in our midst’. He may not be, but tell that to perception. The way out is for the Akpabio/Jonah faction to play wise and invite him. Remind him that he is a PDP-ite, remind him of the party’s direction; remind him of the risks associated with rank-opening and the one-leg-in-one-leg-out dead-end strategy. If he has understanding of the times, some harmonisation should bring him to the saddle and a cosy alternative found for Jang. His first loyalty is to his party. If he understands it otherwise, he’s a rover.
No victor, no vanquished sounds good; we’ve heard it before, but better is loyalty.
Onyegbule, PhD, is the Consultant-in-Chief of Conflict Out- Peace In Consult.)
buchionye@yahoo.co.uk
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