Jonathan And Obasanjo Feud – Implications For 2015 By Theophilus Ilevbare

The latest round of bickering and
mudslinging between former
President Olusegun Obasanjo and
incumbent Goodluck Jonathan took
a new twist when the former chose
the auspicious occasion of a CNN
interview to criticise Jonathan’s
approach to the Boko Haram
insurgency, he said “To deal with a
group like that, you need a carrot
and stick. The carrot is finding out
how to reach out to them. When you
try to reach out to them and they are
not amenable to being reached out
to, you have to use the stick”.
Prior to Obasanjo’s recent comment,
he had stunned his audience, at a
gathering to review the
unemployment in the west African
sub-region tagged the West African
Regional Conference on Youth
Employment held in Dakar, Senegal,
as he fired salvos at his protégé.
The ex-President as a guest speaker
predicted a revolution was looming
in Nigeria if the high rate of youth
unemployment which he put at 72
percent remains unchecked and
should the Jonathan government fail
to create employment, the attendant
catastrophe would consume the
elite, himself included.
Still smarting from his Dakar
outburst, he continued his barrage
at Jonathan, this time around in
Warri, at an event marking the
fortieth year calling to ministry in
the vineyard of God of CAN
President Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor,
where he described the president as
a weak leader pointing to the
government’s lukewarm approach to
the Boko Haram crisis and the
pervading insecurity in the country
that could have been effectively
tackled if decisive action had been
taken by the Jonathan
administration.
November last year, President
Jonathan broke his silence in a
televised media chat as he
responded to Obasanjo’s
prescription, describing the military
invasion (to fish out militants who
killed some security men) and brute
use of force on the people of Odi as
futile as it only resulted in
bloodshed and lose of innocent
lives. .
Not long ago, Obasanjo also took a
swipe at Jonathan’s administration
for waste of the country’s foreign
reserve, put at about $35 billion in
2007. Obasanjo said, “We left what
we call excess crude, let’s build it
for rainy day, up to $35 billion;
within three years, the $35 billion
disappeared. Whether the money
disappeared or it was shared, the
fact remains that $35 billion
disappeared from the foreign reserve
I left behind in office. When we left
that money, we thought we were
leaving it for the rainy day…”
Meanwhile as a strategy to
checkmate Obasanjo’s overbearing
influence on the ruling Peoples
Democratic Pary (PDP), loyalist to
the incumbent Jonathan have been
mounting pressure on government
to petition Obasanjo to the
International Criminal Court (ICC) at
the Hague on the invasion of Odi by
the military which left civilians dead,
by any standard this equates to
crimes against humanity. Another
ploy to tame the rampaging former
president are plans to expose some
of his misdeeds during his 8-year
unimpressive tenure.
The postponement of the BoT
chairman (s)election can easily be
linked to the face-off between
President Goodluck Jonathan and
ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo as
loyalists of both men came to a
stand-off in their bid to elect a new
chairman, which interestingly was
the only agenda of the meeting.
Delegates where thorn in two minds
as to whom to pick amid intense
lobbying for the former president’s
candidate Ahmadu Alli, a former
chairman of the party, and President
Jonathan’s prefered choice – the
newly appointed chairman of the
Nigerian Ports Authority – Tony
Anenih, with the sobriquet, ‘Mr Fix
It’.
As events unfolded, it became
crystal clear that the battle for the
BoT chairmanship had a direct
bearing with the tussle for the
Presidential ticket of the PDP in
2015 and whoever emerges as
chairman is crucial to that agenda.
Jonathan’s group opposed the
election of Obasanjo’s anointed
candidate, Alli. His group convinced
other members that it won’t augur
well for Anenih to be the chairman
of NPA and BoT, as others should be
given the opportunity to serve the
party. Apparently, the Jonathan
camp opposed Pro-Obasanjo’s
choice of Alli, arguing that such
would be detrimental to Jonathan’s
second term ambition. On the other
hand, Anenih’s emergence as
chairman might hinder the choice of
Obasanjo’s candidate for the
presidential race in 2015. Therein
lies the stand-off.
The ex-President is getting tacit
support from northern political
figures of PDP extraction especially
those eyeing the 2015 presidential
ticket. They consider his feud with
Jonathan as capable of withering his
prowess and ultimately truncate
Jonathan’s ambition to contest the
2015 elections. These northerners
still feel shortchanged that the two
terms of Yar’adua’s administration
which began in 2007 was not
completed before Jonathan came
onboard shoving aside the zoning
arrangement of the PDP. They
reason power should return to the
north in 2015 and any role Mr
Obasanjo can play to rejig would be
welcomed. This much Mr Obasanjo
displayed when he invited
politicians from the north to the
launch of a ‘political’ mosque
project. A good number of northern
governors and politicians were
present at the fund-raiser at
Abeokuta. They made generous
donation to the project.
Chief Obasanjo in the past was
instrumental to Mr Jonathan’s
meteoric rise from a deputy
governor in Bayelsa state to
governor, then vice president, acting
president, substantive president and
later elected as President in the
aftermath of Yar’adua’s death in
2010. The Ota farmer was peeved by
his exclusion from Jonathan’s
administration as the President now
prefer his kinsmen and sycophants
as members of his inner caucus
rather than seeking his benefactor’s
opinion on key national issues.
More so, his disaffection with
Jonathan can easily be traced to the
elections in the South-West states
of Ondo, Osun and Ekiti where PDP
lost to the ACN and LP. The ex-
president, famous for his ability to
spin election results is irritated by
the failure of President Jonathan to
flex his presidential muscle to
influence court judgments in favour
of PDP, a suggestion Jonathan
turned down. Against these
backdrop, if Chief Olusegun
Obasanjo now finds everything
wrong with the man he installed as
president then it must be nothing
more than an agitation for the 2015
polls.
That the former president is building
bridges across the country ahead
the 2015 elections and picking holes
at Jonathan’s government is a
strong indication that Mr Obasanjo
has pitched tent with those opposed
to Jonathan running the 2015
election. Awkwardly, the President is
up against his benefactor. President.
Jonathan is fighting the battle of his
political soul as he now seem to
have reneged on the promise he
made to Nigerians that he won’t
seek a second term in office and
Obasanjo is at the front of the queue
to stop his re-election.
In the event of Chief Obasanjo’s
inability to clinch the PDP ticket for
whoever becomes his anointed
candidate, his ties with the members
of the PDP who have defected, and
now part of the planned merger
between the ANPP, CPC and the
ACN will prove invaluable as his
anti-Jonathan rhetoric has already
won him support from the north,
majority of whom are still angry at
the PDP’s zoning arrangement that
was breached by Jonathan.
As the incumbent, Jonathan can
swing major decisions in his favour,
he has enough resources, as some
recent appointments and contracts
awarded has shown, at his disposal
to deploy in a desperate bid to
ensure he returns, but he must first
slug it out with a strong northern
candidate from the PDP in the
primaries and another from the
possible merger of some opposition
parties in the election proper.
It is not happenstance that
Obasanjo has come out unscathed
from tough political battles, ask the
likes of Atiku Abubakar his former
vice President; former governor of
Ogun state, Otunba Gbenga Daniel;
former Senate President, Anyim Pius
Anyim; former Speaker of House of
Representative, Umar Gha’li
Na’Abbah and a host of others, the
ex-President has always had his
way in the end. He sure wields a lot
of influence politically inspite of his
resignation as the chairman of the
BoT of the ruling PDP sometime
ago. It has been a herculean task
replacing him as I write and now it
seems incumbent President
Jonathan might be stretching his
goodluck rather too far should he
decide to contest in 2015.

theophilus@ilevbare.com
http://ilevbare.com
twitter: @tilevbare