Opinion: The political geography of the PDP crisis

by Bamidele Ademola Olateju

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We must not forget that this country survives on oil from the Niger Delta. The nation’s mangrove swamp is home to alternate governments whose only restraint is Jonathan’s ascension to power.

The plot thickens, the power concerto is on allegro; no one knows how this bizarre composition would end.

What we know is; the People’s Democratic Party’s current existential crisis has never been about us. This mix of stasis and confusion is about the foul dust of political dispossession floating in the wake of their dreams of power.

There are no pointers for optimism because the sheep in Nigeria’s “Animal Farm” learns nothing and forgets everything. They learn their A,B,C,D within the limits of their mental retardation and recite it with sheepish gusto.

As soon as they are taught E,F,G,H they unlearn and forget A,B,C,D.

Apparently, no lessons learnt from the unfortunate mishandling of Yar’adua’s incapacitation and how it galvanized the South for Jonathan.

The political geography involved in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Factionalization gets more brazen and the North can lose again.

Why and how can they lose? They can lose by making their internal power struggle about the return of power to the North at all cost.

They can lose if they ignore the emergent ethno-religious consensus in the South. They can lose if they fail to understand that without Christians no Northern Muslim can win Presidential elections in Nigeria again.

The North’s political domination of Nigeria has always depended on the political calculations of what the South does, with the South increasing the North’s political significance with their usual lack of consensus.

That has since changed with the election of Jonathan.

When President Obasanjo lost the third term gambit, he diverted his energy for good or ill to upsetting the existing formulations by engineering the emergence of the next president.

Escalating militancy in the creeks (threatened the flow of oil) sent clear signals that the heavily armed minority Ijaw on whose land the oil that feeds Nigeria comes from, are determined to be players at the center.

With this in mind, President Obasanjo’s political calculations upturned the apple cart to covertly pave way for the emergence of an Ijaw president – Jonathan.

Unfortunately for Nigerians and the Ijaw people who will be tarnished for a long time by their son’s incompetence, Jonathan, sees no urgency in the Nigerian situation, has no ambition to attain and no defined legacy to pursue.

He’s proved subject to a more personal fantasy of loving power for its own sake.

Has Obasanjo exploited this? I think so.

Goodluck Jonathan was never his own man. In a feeble attempt to extricate himself, he wriggled away from the controlling embrace of Obasanjo only to find himself in the thorny embrace of political jobbers who benefitted from his indolence.

He hinged the levers of his politics only on 2015 and the raw accoutrements of power while ignoring the daunting task of governance.

Now, the country and everyone who has an opinion hates him. He’s paying for his own sins and the sins of those he surrounded himself with.

We must be careful on how the internal squabbles affects all of us. The level of desperation within the PDP is an indication that the 2015 general election may present a war situation and may not be entirely an exercise for Nigerians to elect their choice of leaders as anticipated.

The Obasanjo’s and Atiku’s must tread carefully as not to totally humiliate Jonathan. From every indication, the President is not going for caretaker. There’s no sign he’s content to ride out whatever remains of his tenure in the Barcalounger.

That is why the gladiators must be circumspect handling this crisis. If the crisis is not handled deftly, it might plunge the country into the deep end with severe ethnic and religious colorations.

As we all are aware, the country is awash with weapons whose importation was funded by politicians with a view to subvert dissent, silence rivals, intimidate opponents and the people who elected them.

We must not forget that this country survives on oil from the Niger Delta. The nation’s mangrove swamp is home to alternate governments whose only restraint is Jonathan’s ascension to power.

They have the will and enough weapons to cripple the economy and keep it prostrate for months. Can the nation survive the onslaught of Boko Haram in the North and economic sabotage in the South? I don’t think so.

The political class in its own interest, must stop pretending not to understand the signs and what should be done to save us from the brink.

I have no idea in whose interest President Obasanjo often acts. The way things are, we must prevail on him (beg him) to put Nigeria’s interest first.

With his help, PDP is in complete disarray to our eternal joy, Jonathan is mortally wounded, he should please let Jonathan die on the vine.

I’m not worried about Atiku. He is a rebel without a pause with an impressive political stamina that amounts only to desperation and more desperation.

If the history of this country is anything to go by, it favors political opportunists than political desperadoes.

All lovers of Nigeria regardless of their partisan leanings should focus on creating an enabling environment for rational discourse and open contestation of ideas as we inch closer to 2015.

Inflammatory remarks designed to inflame passion and deepen existing divisions to make political gains can only lead to chaos.

We have been on the edge for too long and we are definitely worn and weary. Our political godfathers often believe they can always pull the tether when we approach the brink. However, our deep seated differences makes me believe that no one can predict the outcome of this trip to the cliff’s edge.

This country needs statesmen whose foci are the development of our youth, the welfare of the next generation of Nigerians and survival of the polity, not just the 2015 elections.

Never must we forget that we all will bear the brunt of any disaster we bring on ourselves.

If Nigeria fails, we will all be the worse for it. No African nation has the resources to contain a Nigerian tragedy. The whole world is laughing at us. We are regarded as a lost cause, a bad joke and a people with the political sophistication of cavemen.

Courtesy of our leaders, Nigeria dwells in the backwaters of socio-economic development by design and not destiny. In a century marked by leaders competing to project their nations into worldwide prominence and competitiveness, we are still struggling with greed and primitive acquisition.

The world has nothing for us other than layers of disdain while African nations treat us with polite indifference.

The die is cast for Jonathan, 2015 is too long to render him useless. With each passing day, President Jonathan is looking more vulnerable than venerable.

President Obasanjo and his band of political engineers should give Jonathan a soft landing. If they don’t, he may be pushed to throw in everything he’s got including the kitchen sink.

The problem with throwing the kitchen sink is; you might break a pipe. When you break a pipe, you’ve got a real mess on your hands. Good luck with that!

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

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