by Ekerete Udoh

It is light of the above that I hereby offer my prognostication and assert that if the north thinks it would wrestle power easily from President Jonathan just because the region believes it is time we  had “OUR power back” they are in for a rude awakening.

The motivation to dwell on this topic was drawn from colleague-Simon Kolawole’s incisive analysis of the possible battleground regions in the forthcoming 2015 presidential elections. In his very well thought-out analysis which he presented last Sunday “2015: The Hottest Battleground” Simon had asserted that the best platform for “the core north to reclaim Aso Rock” remains the APC given the current courtship of convenience between the South West and the core North. While President Jonathan’s best bet will be to cobble together support from the South East, South South and the Northern minorities.  In Simon’s considered opinion, the South West eternally alarmed and suspicious of the core North’s hegemonistic tendencies, may rebel against the contours of the proposed marriage and seek for a surgical break. South west, thus will be the battleground in Simeon’s opinion

It is light of the above that I hereby offer my prognostication and assert that if the north thinks it would wrestle power easily from President Jonathan just because the region believes it is time we  had “OUR power back” they are in for a rude awakening.  The realignment that occurred in 2011 presidential elections is still holding strong and for anyone to imagine it has weakened, probably do not understand the level of sophistication that the Nigerian electorate appears to have internalized.

Something significant occurred in 2011 presidential election that the media and the punditry class have not paid a great attention to: the capacity for geo-political zones to vote local issues and candidates at the local level and to vote their conscience and beliefs at the national level.  The north, believing as it does today, that the South West was going to abandon Jonathan and vote for a northern candidate had believed its preferred candidate-General Buhari was going to win the presidential election. They had every reason to be optimistic. The South West under the political thump of the political maestro-Gov. Bola Ahmed Tinubu, had voted massively for the ACN and was expected to throw her support to Gen Buhari who was then seen to have entered into an informal alliance with the ACN.

It didn’t quite happen, as the people of the South West massively voted for President Jonathan and handed him a sounding victory at the polls. Will the same scenario play out in 2015? I think it would and the reason may not be that the region is totally enamored of President Jonathan, but they will support him regardless due to the aggressive and in-your face pursuit of power by certain elements within the northern political/ military, intellectual and industrial groups.

The subterfuge and machinations currently playing out between the old and the new PDP can be traceable to one impulse: to reclaim power for the north and to defeat President Jonathan and make him a one-term president. On the face of it, you may say it is in the nature of politics for those seeking power to employ every strategy at its disposal to fight and win power. The United States system which we have adopted locks stock and barrel promotes a healthy competition of ideas and sometimes scary tactics to win election. Candidates sometimes openly conflate facts and realities with their own manufactured statistics, lies are common staple-especially those on the fringes of the two parties. Candidates conjure imaginary threats to their existential platforms, and thinly veiled appeal to racial fears and prejudices are often openly or subliminally employed. While the motivation to win elections in America is to advance ideological beliefs, ours is to advance ethnic and religious interests.  While elected leaders are motivated to promote the common god, ours is to protect and promote common greed and other exclusionary tendencies.

Just as the American electorate openly frown at those who appeal to base instincts, the worst in human condition and nature, as the Republican Party  once did, using the now highly discredited and discarded wining formula based on what they called the “Southern Strategy” a strategy that promoted old racial prejudices aimed at the blacks and other  minority groups, warning the white population that their children’s future was in jeopardy if they continued to vote for a party that used the toils of their hardwork to feed  what they regard as the indolence of the blacks and the Latinos. The strategy worked for years, pitting whites, especially rural and non-college educated whites, those who are labeled “blue collar workers’ or ‘Reagan Democrats’ as the Republican strategists had called them against those who had a more liberal approach to public policy.

The rallying cry was and still remains the issue of big government and social safety net. To the Republicans, the future of the white children will be in jeopardy if government continued to spend billions in taking care of people who do not pay taxes and are not adding value to the economic growth of the United States. Afraid that the Democrats were going to bankrupt the union, Americans from 1968, when the Southern Strategy was born, and was employed to devastating effects by the Nixon 1968 presidential election voted for the Republicans, with the brief exception of 1976, when President Ford’s obtuse answer during the Presidential debate that former Eastern Europe was not under the sphere of influence of the then Soviet Union alarmed Americans and forced them to vote for the Democrat-Jimmy Carter.

This strategy came full circle during the eight year administration of Ronald Reagan. The Democratic Party was in free fall, suffering from crises of identity, as Americans had been made to sour on the brand. The south dominated the American presidential elections, as issues such as lower taxes, abortion rights, immigration and gay rights, which resonated in the south, the Bible belt and the American heartland dominated headlines. The Democrats were effectively defined as the party of secular humanists, those that want to substantially alter the foundational principles of the founding fathers, a party of illegal immigrants, of welfare kings and queens and a party that was soft on national security.

Bill Clinton who won in 1992, chiefly because of the split in libertarian and conservatives votes between George H. Bush and Ross Perot, had to concede that that era of “big government as the nation knew was over.” The Republicans had successfully bulldozed the nation into believing that welfare and taking care of the poor and the harried was antithetical to the American spirit anchored in rugged individualism.
With the defeat of Al Gore in the 2000 presidential elections and the return to power of the neoconservatives ad uber- Cold War warriors, the campaign slogan of George W. Bush which was anchored on the concept of ‘Compassionate Conservatism’ suffered a terrible set back as the fiscal hawks in his administration frowned against social safety nets and embarked on cutting down vital services hitherto enjoyed by the poor and the economically deprived.

The language the hawks employed was harsh and uncaring and their method and approach was aggressive and in- your- face. Americans were beginning to recoil in shock with the intemperate language the Republicans were employing to define their fellow citizens-all in an effort to win elections and maintain the status quo.  The push back by the Democrats which started with the 2006 Congressional elections created a new realignment of political forces- the Latinos who now had become the largest minority group in America, the African Americans, the Asian Americans and those who call themselves ‘hopeless liberal’ all came together and  massively voted for the Democrats.

This realignment was to continue in 2008 presidential elections when the same groups, with the independents, still souring on the Republican’s uncaring tendencies, voted for Barack Obama and reelected him in 2012. The Republican Party today, has been reduced to a regional party with strong base in the south and the Tea Partiers. The rest of the nation appeared to have moved beyond the party of divisiveness, of appealing to regional or ethnic instincts and fears. Today, the Republican Party starts a presidential election campaign with almost 30 percent f the electorate massively against them. Within the remaining 70 percent, the Democrats are certain to peel off at least 20-25 percent, thus compounding the woes of the party winning a presidential election

You may ask where I am going with all this background. My answer is simple: Nigerians, especially the younger elements appear to be tired of the resort to ethnic, religious and tribal instincts and fears, they are tired of parties not drawing contrast in governance styles founded on clear ideological differences, but rather, stoking ethnic and religious fears. Even though other regions are employing this strategy in varying degrees, the north appears to be the most aggressive and the language and metaphor employed, alarming and militaristic.

The north must recalibrate its message and subsume the incendiary rhetoric of some of its political leaders, otherwise the realigned forces that ensured the election of President Jonathan, may become a permanent force. Ten years ago, Karl Rove, the architect of George W. Bush’ two presidential victories, had told Americans the GOP will rule for decades because he thought the strategy of appealing to racial fears and prejudices will ensure them a permanent hold within the electorate.

That has now failed. If the South South, South East, Northern  minorities and a substantial percentage of the electorate in the South West continue to realign their forces, the core North may have no choice but to negotiate power with other components instead of ‘demanding’ power back as some of its leaders seem to be advocating.

The Republican Party today is negotiating with constituencies they had long thought did not factor into their political and strategic calculus. Those promoting the APC must appreciate this dynamic or they will find out to their chagrin that the nation has moved beyond a crass resort to primordial and provincial fears.

 

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